Only six percent of U.S. adults say they have a “great deal of confidence in journalists to act in the public’s best interests.” On the other end of the spectrum, nearly three times as many, 17 percent, say they have “no confidence at all.”
This is according to a Pew-Knight poll taken in mid-December but released this week of U.S. adults.
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“A majority of Americans (57 percent) express low confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public,” reads the pollster summary. “This includes 40 percent who say they have not too much confidence and 17 percent who say they have none at all. By comparison, 43 percent of adults say they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in journalists.”
Keep in mind, this isn’t a poll looking at trust in media, but asking if the media act in the best interest of the public, and only 43 percent have say the media do. Only 43 percent.
That’s down from 47 percent last year.
Among Republicans, only 25 percent believe the media act in the public’s best interests.
Among Democrats, 61 percent agree, which is down from 69 percent last year.
From any sane perspective, the idea that 43 percent still have confidence is absurd. Even if you’re a Democrat, how does lying, hoaxing, dividing, and spreading hate act in the public interest? That’s all the media do, so where’s the good part?
One Democrat from Pew’s focus group summed it up nicely. “We don’t have any really good journalists right now who are doing accurate news.”
No kidding.
A Republican told Pew, “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. But in a world where everything has become much more biased, and there are unreliable and biased sources, you have to kind of take things with a grain of salt.”
To say the least.
As far as I’m concerned, this poll proves we’re winning. Using the truth, New Media has almost entirely undermined the credibility of the media, and, by extension, gutted the media’s ability to sway, manipulate, or shape public opinion. And this lack of credibility is brutalizing the bottom line of most of these corporate media outlets, along with their influence.
The Washington Post is on life support. No one pays attention to CNN anymore. MSNOW remains left-wing talk radio with pictures. The New York Times has become the HGTVTimes — a lifestyle and games outlet with a news section. Now that they have lost their corporate welfare, no one pays attention to anything coming of NPR or PBS. And on and on…
Like Rolling Stone and Newsweek, these brands will always be around. What matters most to them is their influence, and that’s what’s dying — dying by way of suicide, to be precise.
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