‘Because they’re liars’

Bob Unruh
WND News Center

Americans would have learned, by following the dictates of the legacy media in America:

• Those massive riots after the death of George Floyd, which left behind hundreds of millions of dollars in destruction, were simply “unrest.”
• And the still-surging evidence of potential corruption in the Biden family, involving payments from foreign interests, bribes and threats over nonpayment, is nothing but “Russian disinformation.”
• And the January 6, 2021, protest-turned-riot in Washington actually was a deliberate attempt to overthrow the government, complete with a plot to take control of the military and much, much more, as would be involved in an “insurrection.”

Further, they would learn that all America is racist and the solution to that racism is more racism.

Now a new polling from Gallup reveals nearly four in 10 Americans have “no confidence at all” in the media.

That’s up from 27% in 2016.

Also revealed was the fact that the trust among Democrats, with whom many media openly align and support, is down 12 points from a year ago.

The polling organization said, “The 32% of Americans who say they trust the mass media ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way ties Gallup’s lowest historical reading, previously recorded in 2016.”

“Another 29% of U.S. adults have ‘not very much’ trust, while a record-high 39% register ‘none at all.’ This nearly four in 10 Americans who completely lack confidence in the media is the highest on record by one percentage point. It is 12 points higher than the 2016 reading, which came amid sharp criticism of the media from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump – making the current assessment of the media the grimmest in Gallup’s history,” Gallup reported.

“In 2016, U.S. adults were most likely to say they had ‘not very much’ trust.”

The organization reported its polling was done Sept. 1-23, and was the second year in a row that “the share of Americans who have no confidence at all in the media has surpassed the percentage with a great deal or fair amount of trust.”

Gallup said, “Democrats’ confidence in the mass media has consistently outpaced Republicans’, but the latest gap of 47 points is the narrowest since 2016. Democrats’ trust in the media has fallen 12 points over the past year, to 58%, and compares with 11% among Republicans and 29% among independents.”

A report at The Washington Stand quoted JP Duffy, an editor at TWS who also serves as vice president of Communications at Family Research Council:

“Gallup’s survey timeline helps explain what happened. It’s been 18 years since this Gallup survey reported half or more of Americans have held a ‘great deal or fair amount’ of trust and confidence in the media,” he said. “In the Obama era, trust in the media began a precipitous drop and never recovered. President Obama sowed much of this division when he imposed policies that suppressed religious liberty as never before and used his bully pulpit to criticize those who ‘cling to guns or religion.’ The media cheered him on and even more so when he later endorsed redefining marriage.”

And Melissa Mackenzie, publisher of The American Spectator, told The Stand, “Trust in the media is at an all-time low because the media have become purveyors of dis- and misinformation. … They’ve repeatedly fomented emotional responses in the public by spreading lies about nearly every topic — health care with COVID, race relations, Biden’s foreign influence problems, and on and on. No one trusts the media because they’re liars. They deserve no trust and deserve the contempt of the American people.”

Gallup noted that a poll just a few months back revealed “newspapers and television news were among the least-trusted institutions in the U.S. Only 18% of Americans trusted newspapers, down from 21% in 2021, and only 14% trusted television news, down from 16% in 2021.”

Further, another Gallup study found “that 89% of Americans say they believe mainstream news to be politically biased, compared to only 9% who said they don’t see ‘too much’ political bias and only 2% who said they see no political bias ‘at all.'”