I can’t imagine this will surprise anyone, but today Gallup released the results of a new poll which shows a decided lack of trust in, or interest in watching, the media coverage of political news. Those who say they are “closely following” such news is lower than in previous election years.
Americans’ distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004.
The record distrust in the media, based on a survey conducted Sept. 6-9, 2012, also means that negativity toward the media is at an all-time high for a presidential election year. This reflects the continuation of a pattern in which negativity increases every election year compared with the year prior. The current gap between negative and positive views – 20 percentage points – is by far the highest Gallup has recorded since it began regularly asking the question in the 1990s. Trust in the media was much higher, and more positive than negative, in the years prior to 2004 – as high as 72% when Gallup asked this question three times in the 1970s.
There are Republican, Democratic and Independent differences revealed in the poll.
Despite their record-low trust in media, Republicans are the partisan group most likely to be paying close attention to news about national politics, with the 48% who are doing so similar to the 50% in 2008 and up significantly from 38% in 2004. Independents and Democrats are less likely than Republicans to be paying close attention, with their levels of attention similar to 2008 and 2004.
This is kind of important, but will quietly disappear.
Nothing will change. They will continue to hire shiny, empty people.
Your opinion may be this is due to lack of knowledge on the part of media personalities, but the people who responded to the poll question based it on the media acting more like cheerleaders for a cause as opposed to always seeking to report fully and objectively. The distrust is well-earned.
Considering the wingnutopians have been screaming the ‘LIBERAL MEDIA” with no factual basis what so ever for around 40 years now followed by the overtly propagandistic spewing s of Faux not news no, this is not a surprise.