AMERICA’S LACK OF TRUST IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA
The president boasts of his role
in increasing distrust in America’s media.
This graph shows the effect that the Fox
Network and Donald Trump have had on the stoking the lack of trust that the
American public has in mainstream media.
It there is
anything that we can say that Donald
Trump and the Fox News Network
have contributed to America, it is the increased distrust of the mainstream
media by the American public. Both of
these entities have become the real “Fake
News” of which Donald Trump continues to complain.
In a recent
Sunday “Meet The Press” hour, moderator Chuck Todd helped to cement the
awful legacy of Roger Ailes, the late founder and president of Fox News. In a back-and-forth
with David Brody of Christian Broadcast Network News, Todd addressed
one of the 21st Century’s most depressing trend lines: the American public’s trust in the accuracy and integrity of the media.
In addition, a
2018 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey
found that, overall, “Americans
believe 62% of the news they see on television, read in newspapers and hear on
the radio is biased.”
So, just who
is this David Brody? Brody co-wrote the
book: THE FAITH OF DONALD J. TRUMP.
What the
authors wrote was that President Trump won over evangelicals not by pandering
to them, but by supporting them and all their most important issues without
pretending to be something he’s not. Though the forty-fifth president is far
from the perfect vessel, as he has been married three times, his supporters
argue that Donald Trump may be just what America needs. This book tells how he
has surrounded himself with believers who think he is the one guiding figure
who can return America to the traditional values of hard work, discipline,
duty, respect, and faith, that have long been the foundation of American life,
and truly make America great again in all ways.
Yep, that’s
what they really wrote in their book on Trump’s faith.
But here is
the conversation that Brody had with Chuck Todd on Meet The Press:
Brody: I’d say on the Republican side
they got exactly what they wanted, a guy that was going to shake things up.
Look, I think one of the best things going in Donald Trump’s favor, is the
mainstream media. I hate to say it. I know I’m sitting on a “Meet the Press” roundtable, but the
truth of the matter is 62% of
Americans think the media is biased. So in other words, if you look at the
approval ratings of Donald Trump versus the approval rating of the media, well
. . .
Todd: The conservative echo chamber
created that environment. It has been a tactic and a tool of the Roger Ailes
[Fox Network] created echo chamber.
Brody: Yeah.
Todd: So let’s not pretend it’s not
anything other than that.
Brody: Well, hang on. Yes and no.
Because remember, the independents are part of Donald Trump’s base. And I think
that is very important. A lot of times we say, “Republicans are Donald Trump’s
base.” Not really. They’re . . .
Todd: No. It’s a separate Trump — it
is a different version of the Republican Party.
Brody: But those Independents also
distrust media. This is not just Republicans. It is many Americans across . . .
Todd: Oh, no. No. No. I take your point.
I’m just saying it was a creation — it was a campaign tactic. It’s not based in
much fact.
It goes
without saying that the mainstream media is usually a political asset for the
president. But President Trump’s authoritarian rants against “fake news” are among the few on-going lines of the past three
years, along with his nonstop untruthfulness and narcissism. He continues to
boast about his own role in increasing the distrust of Americans in the
media. A free press media that is a requirement for a functioning, small “d” democracy.
As to Todd’s
point about the Ailes, he is correct.
Since 1996, Fox News has
boosted its ratings throughout its history by going after mainstream outlets
when they published scoops unfavorable to Republican candidates. The Fox network’s ideology on this front was
consistent, persistent and, many times totally idiotic. However, it did help attract a big and mostly
Republican audience, an issue that wasn’t lost on Trump himself, a long-time
friend of Ailes and even today, a longtime guest on the network’s morning
program, “Fox & Friends.”
How much did
Trump poison the American public with his Ailes developed attacks on the media?
Well,
another Gallup-Knight survey found that “Four in 10 (40%) of Republicans consider accurate news stories that
cast a politician or political group in a negative light to always be ‘fake
news.’ ” The number for Democrats was only 17%. Such a divide over media
trust is by no means a small issue: The 2018 Poynter Media Trust Survey found that “high-knowledge” Democrats have a 98% trust rating in the media, versus 11% for “high-knowledge” Republicans.
These Trump
supporting media’s detractors state that the media is staffed in large
part by liberal Democrats and is getting the distrust numbers that it
deserves.
There is no
doubt that there are media errors and instances of bias, but the campaign cited by
Todd has worked negative wonders over the years, as Trump continues to prove by
his stretching its rhetoric to false extremes.
But could this
issue be starting to turn around?
Trust-in-media numbers are starting to bump up a bit, as the Poynter survey has demonstrated.
There’s no
scientific explanation for this change. However, some of the US media, along with some Republican primary opponents, have begun portraying Trump as an incompetent, soulless liar during the 2016
presidential election, and that he has gone on to govern as an incompetent,
liar devoid of any soul.
That looks like a portion of the media has had it with the “fake
news” of both Trump and the Fox Network.
Hopefully,
when the Robert Mueller report is finally released, even more of the mainstream
media will come to these same conclusions.
Copyright G.Ater 2018
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