Not that it is a surprise (or much of one), but we Americans don’t trust the media any more:
A majority of Americans (57%) express low confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis from the Pew-Knight Initiative. This includes 40% who say they have not too much confidence and 17% who say they have none at all. By comparison, 43% of adults say they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in journalists.
The Enemy of the People, amirite?
We continue to find large differences by political party on this topic. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (61%) are more than twice as likely as Republicans and GOP leaners (25%) to say they have confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public.
I guess Democrats have not yet connected the dots between billionaire owners and the propaganda being served?
As part of the new survey, we also conducted focus groups with 45 Americans. Regardless of political party, some of the participants in these focus groups described this broader loss of confidence in the news industry, saying they no longer know who or what to trust. For example, a Democratic woman in her 50s said, “We don’t have any really good journalists right now that are doing accurate news.”
Some participants said they now curate their news more carefully, whether by verifying what they come across or by narrowing their consumption to a small set of trusted sources.
“It used to be, as a kid, I could just turn on the news on TV and it’s like everything is believable and credible,” a Republican woman in her 40s said. “But in a world where everything has become much more biased, and there’s unreliable and biased sources, you have to kind of take things with a grain of salt and look at where is it coming from, and who’s the source, and what is their main goal? And you just have to put a filter on it.”
Democrats are starting to do that, too.
The difference is that the media is owned/captured by Republican Billionaires, and there is no equivalent on the Left. Getting news from a handful of sub stacks and pod casts is not the equivalent of MAGA getting their news poured over them from all of their many distribution channels, from Hate Radio to (now) CBS.
There is no equivalent media ecosystem for the Left.
