60% of Americans Don’t Trust the Mainstream Media
What’s that? You say you don’t trust the mainstream media? You are not alone. A Gallup poll reveals that 60% of Americans say they don’t trust the MSM. This percentage is rising.
Prior to 2004, Americans were more trusting of the MSM than now. Before 2004 in presidential election years, trust was higher. In the 1970s, it was 72%
The decline this year is heaviest in Republican circles. Only 26% trust the MSM. Among independents, it is not much higher: 31%. But Republicans were equally distrustful in 2008. The big decline has come among independents.
In September 2008, 43% of Americans said they were paying attention to national politics. Today, it is 39%.
Republicans say they pay attention: around 48%. It was 50% in 2008 and 38% in 2004.
Democrats are interested in key swing states.
The MSM thinks it is crucial for democracy. It isn’t. The following is self-puffery.
On a broad level, Americans’ high level of distrust in the media poses a challenge to democracy and to creating a fully engaged citizenry.
Then we are told this: "Media sources must clearly do more to earn the trust of Americans, the majority of whom see the media as biased one way or the other.” As John Wayne said in The Searchers, “That’ll be the day.”
Then there is this: “At the same time, there is an opportunity for others outside the “mass media” to serve as information sources that Americans do trust.” Amen!
The MSM is losing ground. This is very good news. The Establishment is losing its leverage over the supply of information.
Continue reading on gallup.com
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Published on September 27, 2012. The original is here.
The figure was 68% in 2016. Here, we read:
Gallup began asking this question in 1972, and on a yearly basis since 1997. Over the history of the entire trend, Americans' trust and confidence hit its highest point in 1976, at 72%, in the wake of widely lauded examples of investigative journalism regarding Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. After staying in the low to mid-50s through the late 1990s and into the early years of the new century, Americans' trust in the media has fallen slowly and steadily. It has consistently been below a majority level since 2007.
I have not been able to track any posting from Gallup on this issue since 2016. There was a report on a Gallup poll in The Washington Times in 2018. The figure of distrust was at 69%. But the paper posted no link to this poll.
The results of this supposedly annual poll are usually posted in mid-September. Maybe Gallup will release its findings for 2019 in 30 days.