84% say that the mainstream media is a danger to democracy
Two prominent polls released in the past week reveal that Americans’ trust in the mainstream media is at a near all time low, with a significant majority believing that it is a threat to freedom.
A Gallup poll highlights that just 34% have trust in the mass media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” a figure that is only 2 points higher than an all time low recorded in 2016.
Just 7% of Americans have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media, according to the survey.
“Notably, this is the first time that the percentage of Americans with no trust at all in the media is higher than the percentage with a great deal or a fair amount combined,” Gallup notes.
The pollster concludes that “Americans’ confidence in the media has been anemic for nearly two decades, and Gallup’s latest findings further document that distrust.”
Meanwhile, A New York Times/Siena poll reveals that a whopping 84% believe that the mass media is a “threat to democracy.”
Almost two thirds believe that the media is a “major threat” to freedom.
Highlighting how political divided the country is, 87 percent of Trump voters view the media is a major threat, while only 33 percent of Biden voters said the same thing.
While Democrats cited the Supreme Court and the Electoral College as other prominent threats to Democracy, Republicans pointed to the federal government, voting by mail and voting machines.
Earlier this year, Gallup found that only Congress is a less trusted institution in the U.S. than television news, with only 11 percent of respondents saying they have “quite a lot” of trust in it.
Newspapers garnered a little more, but still only a measly 16 percent.
The pollster concluded that the criminal justice system and banks are more trusted than the media at this point.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out that the only reason the media manages to register trust levels above zero is because of identity politics, specifically Democrats choosing to side with the blatantly biased agenda driven regime messaging outlets.
Similarly, a Reuters study conducted in 2021 found that nowhere is the media less trusted than in America where fewer than one in three people have any form of trust in the institution.
Few within the media are capable of self analysis, but those who are have acknowledged the media is waging a war on “diversity of thought”, and has become a “cancer”.
A Gallup poll from last year found that 84 per cent of Americans blame the media for creating corrosive political divisions in the country, but also said that there is hope that the media can “serve as a healing force.”
The survey also found that 54 per cent believe fake news is reported deliberately while 74 per cent believe media owners are influencing news coverage.