July 18, 2022

"Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have 'a great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news."

"Both readings are down five percentage points since last year."

Gallup reports, displaying this gruesome graph:

65 comments:

Big Mike said...

What does it mean when the line goes into negative territory?

Jim Gust said...

Who are these 16% that still have confidence in newspapers? Do they actually read them?

gilbar said...

Who, the HELL? Are these 11%? Elderly White Women, i'm guessing?
Does Anyone HERE have a great deal of confidence in the television news?

tim maguire said...

In related news, 16% of US adults work for or have family who works for a newspaper. 11% for television.

wendybar said...

SAD. That's what happens when news becomes Propaganda.

minnesota farm guy said...

Given the way these two entities are performing it is a wonder that anyone trusts them The adults have left the room at the MSM. I don't think they will ever be back. Schools of" journalism" deserve a large prt of the blame.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Count me among the 16% for newspapers. I have a lot of confidence in newspapers, newspapers are really useful. Anytime I need to ship something, run out of tp, or make a pope hat, I don't use anything but. What are the other 84% using to package their amazon returns, styrofoam!? Barbarous.

Charlie Eklund said...

16%? I’m astonished that it’s that high.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

They only cover facts favorable to the narratives. They have prioritized opinion over objectivity.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

So only 11% - 16% of adult Americans are total suckers?

That's a nice improvement

Bob_R said...

Maybe that's too low, but we all really SHOULD be skeptical of what the pixel-stained wretches in the newsroom feed us. They are human and they have all of the hard-wired biases that humans have. Worse, they have now formed monocultures that are addicted to group-think. I love the disparity between the red team and the blue team. The blue team is pretty confident that nothing disturbing will be fed to them.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Gallup reports, displaying this gruesome graph

What's gruesome is the total dishonesty of the American press.

There's nothing gruesome about the American people being aware of the lies and dishonesty

Jupiter said...

I don't believe a word of it. But if it's true, it makes sense.

You know those idiotic e-mails you get, that say, "Hello, I am Idris Bidris with the UN Office For Unclaimed Funds, and I need your help redirecting US $100,000,000.00. Please send me your account number and password." You look at those, and you think, "Why do they bother? Who could possibly be stupid enough to fall for this?" Well, the answer is, not many, but there are people that stupid. And those are exactly the people that Idris Bidris is looking for. So, he (or she, sorry, Idris, if I misgender you) intentionally writes an e-mail only a complete idiot could fall for (It is an ongoing mystery to poor Idris how people who are too stupid to live could have bank accounts worth hacking, but there it is. The USA is a place of marvels). Because he doesn't want to waste his time on people who will ultimately see through whatever complicated rigamarole he intends to feed them.

So, if you are looking to advertise your crappy, useless products on TV, do you want to spend your precious advertising dollars on the likes of me? Hell, no! Like Idris, you want a CNN viewer. Someone too stupid to live, who nonetheless owns a TV.

Mary Beth said...

I'm surprised that they ranked even 5% higher last year. I would have guessed lower, earlier.

Static Ping said...

The primary purpose of the media, from the perspective of the consumer, it to provide the happenings in the world, both domestic and abroad, so the consumer can have a better understanding and make educated decisions based upon that understanding.

The primary purpose of the media, from the purpose of the media, is to obsess over dubious stories that they are too lazy or too corrupt to investigate properly, suppress stories that offend their personal biases and paymasters, generate clickbait of minimal value, and cash paychecks.

Trusting the incompetent and the malicious is foolish.

Beasts of England said...

I’m quite upset by this. Brian Stelter is such a straight shooter…

Drago said...

Greg The Class Traitor: "So only 11% - 16% of adult Americans are total suckers?"

A large portion of them are lefties/fakecons posting at Althouse blog.

WK said...

Surprised that the vertical axis only goes to 60%. If it went to 100% you’d get a better feel that it wasn’t incredibly high to start with.

If you estimate the adult population in 1977 as about 170 million and adult population in 2020 as 250 million the the actual number of true believers only dropped from 85 million to 50 million. Surprised they didn’t present that as it doesn’t sound as bad.

Jupiter said...

"Does Anyone HERE have a great deal of confidence in the television news?"

Well, that does raise an interesting point. While I have not owned a television since the 70's, I actually get fed a fair amount of television news clips by the various right-wing nutcase websites I frequent. And typically, I am fairly credulous with regard to their claims, even though I ought to know better.

So, I guess it depends on what you mean by "confidence". I am confident that the criminal idiot in the video really did imagine that his life would go right back to being loads of fun, if only he could somehow manage to elude, or better, kill, this cop who caught his worthless ass driving around in the car he jacked, and has already made ten minutes of video of his ugly mug. Like, yeah, I'll just grab this cop's gun, and shoot him! Then I'll go chill at my aunt's place 'til the heat blows over. My aunt will be cool, she always liked me. She's got a nice couch, and a big TV!

n.n said...

Hold the bigotry, no diversity [dogma], publishers are not a color bloc, and do not uniformly, monotonically color inside handmade tales.

traditionalguy said...

Interestingly, many intelligent people still insist that until the MSM runs a story declaring a fact, no such thing has happened. Of course what they mean is that believing unapproved facts is dangerous to their career incomes. They are the new Know Nothings.

traditionalguy said...

Interestingly, many intelligent people still insist that until the MSM runs a story declaring a fact, no such thing has happened. Of course what they mean is that believing unapproved facts is dangerous to their career incomes. They are the new Know Nothings.

Yancey Ward said...

Proof 16% of the population are morons.

Bob Boyd said...

People say they have very little to no confidence in the news media...then they hear something they want to believe and suddenly they're screaming at you and calling you names because you questioned it.

Stories about Ukraine are a classic recent example here in the comments. There are many others.

Leland said...

That's higher than I thought.

Anthony said...

Who are these 16%???

rcocean said...

They've broken down Trust in media polls by Party and age group in other polls. Basically a lot more than 16% of Democrats have trust in the newspapers. And a lot less than 16% of republicans distrust it.

Blacks, the elderly, and women (more or less tracking to Demcocrats) trust it more. Everyone else, much less.

The difference in partly due to the Newspapers telling Democrats what they want to hear. Partly because the base of the Democrat party is conformist, uneducated or politically ignorant. They don't know much, don't care much, but they'd rather die than vote for those Goddamn Republicans.

Plus, many Republicans are constantly checking the MSM assertions against other sources and finding the MSM "Unreliable" to say the least. The D's just accept what the MSM says. Imagine thinking yourself "well informed" when you just listened to NPR and watched CNN - but that's what many liberals do!

Kevin said...

Not long until the Earth-shattering KABOOM!

Gusty Winds said...

The MSM in print/online and TV news both push the 2020 voter fraud as the "Big Lie"...as if it is an accepted fact. They prop up the J6 committee legitimate. Last years "conspiracy theories" are later proven true. None bigger than the Hunter Biden laptop and Russian collusion. With each level of mRNA booster...the public fades off from participation. Even the obedient first and second dosers.

Other than college campus and public education left-wing loyalists, nobody is buying it. But they're in on it. The MSM shows no accountability to ratings or their audience. And the Federal government is currently showing no accountability toward the electorate. It should give any analytical and rational person what has actually happened to all of us over the last six years.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Far left dems still love CNN, WaPoo, NPR and Maddow-30 million network MSNBC

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

I've been a subscriber to the Seattle Times since 1977. I'm canceling the subscription when we move into our new home in September/October. Their prime wire sources are the NYT and WaPo, plus the AP and occasionally the LAT. None of those sources is reliable.

Skeptical Voter said...

As long as newspapers and television "news" continue to believe their main function is to prop up, apologize for, or otherwise support Clueless Joe, those numbers are going lower.

That said I still take the Los Angeles Times--can usually spend four or five worthwhile minutes with the sports page. Old habits (I'm a lifelong newspape subsciber and a 48 year subscriber to the LA Times) are hard to break. That said I rarely spend more than 15 seconds each morning glancing at the principal news section--and most mornings less than that. There's nothing there that won't offend my intelligence or upset my sensibilities. It's been a long time since my wife and I had a parakeet for a pet--but the Times might make a good birdcage liner.

Gusty Winds said...

It's not just the mega-media. Here at Althouse we see a lot of analysis and links to the Wash Post, NYTs, New Yorker...etc. Go look around at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or the Miami Herald. They're worse because they just fall in line and push the propaganda locally. I notice Althouse doesn't really touch the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I understand the blog is national so...

Local TV news somehow just regurgitates centralized talking points handed down from above. If you haven't seen the "threat to our democracy" word for word video compilations its jaw dropping. Same words. Read from a script. Spoken word for word by actors and actresses playing the part of news anchors. These people have sold their souls.

mesquito said...

Who reads newspapers? Like the paper kind And who the hell watches teevee?

Jimmy said...

That is really good news. People from both sides of the aisle realize that the MSM is lying, and propagandizing.
the result, unfortunately, of this feeling is that people turn to the many sites that can confirm their own bias. This is bad too.
I said on another thread, sometime ago, that open debate was a good thing, and helped all of us to sort out peoples real intentions and policy goals.
Climate change, green energy, are just two of the 'settled' sciences that would benefit from a debate, in public, on the issue.
The more free speech the better. enough of people on both sides who want to shelter us from it.

Original Mike said...

I bet the news media blames us.

Michael K said...

Middle aged college educated white women make up the 16%. They, of course, live in suburbs where crime is rare or a small town like Madison WI.

Amadeus 48 said...

That graph is a beautiful thing. It shows the consequences of forgetting your mission.

They could have kept news and opinion separate. Instead, they emulated Pravda, Izvestia, and Russia Today, serving only pre-processed fodder. Yech.


Amadeus 48 said...

"Who are these 16% that still have confidence in newspapers? "

NYT readers.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

https://twitter.com/theMRC/status/1549100880674398208

Temujin said...

Here is a classic example. All over the world, massive protests are taking place, protesting failed leftist policies that have led to major inflation along with energy and food shortages. Our media? Asleep at the wheel once again. Not really. In reality they're actively either protecting the Party Narrative, or their tossing up bright shiny objects to attract your attention away from the real news.

Who would go to them for news anymore? We don't need them any longer.

Global Protests/Where's the media?

tim in vermont said...

Newspapers exist to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.

tim in vermont said...

Global warming was really the turning point for me. The lies. There is a funny tweet about the colors that they used on the weather map to show similar heat in Europe in 1995 and currently. I remember 1995, I was in Montreal and it was 104, the world didn't end, now such heat is no longer represented by a sunny orange, but buy a deadly black.

Same with pictures of the Arctic. There is a "temperature" setting in photo processing software that can make snow and ice look sunny and warm. They use it all the time.

Don't get me started on the BS math that Mann used to create his hockey stick. It's all reported as undisputed fact.

gilbar said...

So THAT'S what Lincoln meant by; You can fool Some of the People, All the time?

cubanbob said...

I barely watch the TV/cable news. I skim a few press websites, the Brit ones are better for the most part and the ideology is easier to ignore. One of the better sources is right here. Althouse picks good topics and the commenters here usually do a good job of picking the crap out of the meat.

Jupiter nailed it well. Yancy if 16% is correct, then we should rejoice that the other 84% are not mentally addled. Got to look at the sunny side of the street.

Lilly, a dog said...

I had no idea that 16% of people had pet birds.

mezzrow said...

So far.

Lots of room to go, rumor has it that the Pulitzer will be replaced by a giant auger bit to facilitate digging.

MD Greene said...

I had a brief career as a newspaper reporter and editor in the last century. A few weeks into my first job, I lobbed a snarky comment about a local politician into a story. Minutes after copies of the first edition were distributed around the newsroom, I got a phone call from the editor.

"I have observed that when a reporter writes 'analysts say' what follows is the opinion of the reporter," he said.

Busted! I was 22 years old, just out of college and damn near broke. I thought about this. Why should a small city's subscribers give a darn about what I thought? I hadn't got a journalism degree to share my wisdom. I did it to justify indulging my curiosity by sharing what I learned in written form. And, honestly, it was much more fun. So I went back to it.

Several years later, at a major metropolitan daily, I came to understand that the business model of the enterprise was to peddle opinions that gratified the political and aesthetic views of subscribers. I left for graduate school.

No regrets.

Drago said...

Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker: "Far left dems still love CNN, WaPoo, NPR and Maddow-30 million network MSNBC"

NeverTrump FakeCons/FakeLibertarians love those even more than their far left brethren.

Skeptical Voter said...

Is it possible that journalism school students are dumber than elementary education students? Inquiring minds want to know--but based on the evidence before us, the answer is probably yes.

chickelit said...

Utterly self-inflicted damage and guess what?--the media don't give a shit about those numbers. It's almost like they're trying to fail at their job.

Bob Boyd said...

Original Mike said...
"I bet the news media blames us."

They'll blame us knowing they're lying to us.

Goldenpause said...

The trust numbers can only get worse as readers/viewers age out. The MSM are the modern equivalent of buggy whip manufacturers in 1900. Only their broken business model is a self-inflicted wound.

etbass said...

Wonder how circulation numbers track with the credibility trends?

Lurker21 said...

Who are the 16%? They might be people who only read their local small town paper, or people who barely read the newspapers at all. I can imagine people who believe everything they read in the New York Times or the Washington Post saying that they don't believe newspapers or TV news, because there's always the New York Post and Fox News to complain about.

William said...

Maybe the concept of an impartial news source has gone the way of the corset and the starched white shirt.....I sometimes watch the ABC prime time news show. It's twenty two minutes. The night I watched it, it devoted sixteen minutes to reporting on the Jan 6 hearings and two minutes to the news of those fifty odd migrants who died in the truck.....When they show snippets of Pres. Biden, he looks crisp and decisive. They don't even try any more....I've read that back when newspapers and periodicals were put out by factions and parties to express their viewpoint. This concept of an impartial news gathering organization is relatively new and was probably always a bit of a sham.....Democracy dies in the gaslight.

Kai Akker said...

---Middle aged college educated white women make up the 16%. They, of course, live in suburbs where crime is rare or a small town like Madison WI.

Coy, Doc. Just say it -- Ann Althouse is the most loyal reader of the NYT left.

OK, somehow it still floats her boat. But it presents a big GIGO problem on so many of these posts. C'est la vie.

The Godfather said...

It doesn't have to be this way. Left-wing papers could still tell the truth. 1964 was the first Presidential election that I could vote in (you had to be 21 in those days), so I paid a lot of attention to the political news. The New York Times, of course, was full of anti-Goldwater opinion, highlighting everything he allegedly said that could be made to sound crazy (much as I loved Barry, I have to admit that he didn't make it hard). But if you read the NYT news stories, all the way to the end, you could find out what Goldwater actually said, and could make up your own mind whether or not it was crazy.
I don't know when things changed. Today the only news that's published in the "mainstream media" is what fits the Lefty narrative. It's particularly bad in broadcast news, but the ink-on-paper news is also bad. We can get a different perspective from various blogs and websites - but we have no way to be sure the Righty opinion isn't giving us facts that are just as wrong.
So our Nation has become two nations with different gospels.

cassandra lite said...

This is irreparable. The "journalists" aren't interested in regaining our trust because they've lost their trust in us. The ecosystems they inhabit are friendly to them, the narratives they purvey are preapproved echoes, and the only criticisms they hear, if indeed they do, are from people they don't give a shit about. It's why they've ditched their allegiance to free speech and begun adopting warm fuzzies for censorship.

Randomizer said...

Perhaps some of the people being polled by Gallup primarily consume local news or not much news at all.

Maynard said...

I have 100% confidence in Althouse as an honest liberal.

The rest of the liberal universe, not so much.

-former liberal now in recovery.

FleetUSA said...

If you want straight talk about news I have two:

1. AA's blog here AND the comments section, e.g. Temujin and the youngish woman from Arkansas.

2. Donsurber.blogspot.com He is a straight talking retired newspaper editor from back in the day when papers made sense.

Rusty said...

Tim said,
"Don't get me started on the BS math that Mann used to create his hockey stick. It's all reported as undisputed fact."
And yet he is worshiped like a god.
To quote a colleague of Ms. Ann," I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."
It's a grift meant to keep you in your place.

Rusty said...

Tim said,
"Don't get me started on the BS math that Mann used to create his hockey stick. It's all reported as undisputed fact."
And yet he is worshiped like a god.
To quote a colleague of Ms. Ann," I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who are telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis."
It's a grift meant to keep you in your place.

takirks said...

Anyone who ever put faith or trust in the media is dangerously naive. It has never, ever been trustworthy or acting in the public interest. Look at how many times the newspapers back in the supposed "good old days" acted against the public interest, actively broadcasting secrets that got men killed during WWII, for example.

It's never been "trustworthy", in any way, shape, or form.

What is even more actively dangerous to the body politic is that our schools have been teaching that the media was trustworthy, putting the various outlets up on pedestals for the kiddies to credulously trust. Never ceased to amaze me, in school, how they'd teach the "Yellow Journalism" module in history, then segue over to whatever was going on in Current Events, and somehow never apply the lessons out of William Randolph Hearst's oeuvre...