American’s Trust in the Mainstream Media Continues to Fall
Previously, The Daily Citizen has covered the liberal bias of the American media and according to a recent Gallup poll, American’s trust in the mass media continues downward. Gallup reports, “Americans remain largely mistrustful of the mass media as 41% currently have ‘a great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news ‘fully, accurately and fairly.’ This latest reading represents a four-percentage-point dip since last year.” According to the study, only 13% of Americans trust the media a “great deal” whereas 58% trust the media “not very much” or “not at all.”
Trust in the media is split along partisan lines with 69% of Democrats saying they have confidence in media, with only 15% of Republicans and 36% of independents in agreement. This highlights the liberal bias of the media, since only Democrats trust the media to report fairly and accurately.
The liberal bias of the media has been demonstrated numerous times over the past week as impeachment fervor has continued to notch up.
For example, The New York Times ran an article on September 25 titled, “‘Do Us a Favor’: Call Shows Trump’s Interest in Using U.S. Power for His Gain.” The headline pushes the narrative that President Trump asked the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to do him a favor and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. Yet, the released transcript shows that isn’t correct. When President Trump asked the Ukrainian President to do him a favor, he was referring to an investigation Attorney General William Barr is running on Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election, not Biden’s purported wrongdoings.
The New York Times also ran a propagandistic article on October 1 filled with conjecture. The article said, “During a phone call with the prime minister of Australia, Trump pressured him to produce information discrediting Robert Mueller’s recent investigation. White House aides took the unusual step of restricting access to the transcript of the phone call, in a sign they believed it was problematic.” Once again, this is untrue.
Several hours after the Times broke that news, The Washington Post revealed that President Trump had made the request of the Australian Prime Minister only after Attorney General Barr had asked the President to introduce him by phone to the head of state. The Post writes, “Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said: ‘At Attorney General Barr’s request, the President has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials.’” In other words, The Times falsely insinuated supposed improprieties by President Trump despite the fact he was only acting on request from Attorney General Barr, the chief lawyer of the United States.
These examples, along with countless others show that the mainstream media is often an arm of the Democrat Party.
According to NewsBusters, the three mainstream networks ABC, CBS and NBC have spent 7 hours and 5 minutes on the Trump-Ukraine story while only granting a combined 46 minutes to the alleged misconduct by Joe and Hunter Biden in Ukraine. In addition, NewsBusters has compiled a video that tracks numerous media personalities discussing a potential impeachment of President Trump from November 10, 2016, just two days after Trump won the election, to today. It seems the media has had an impeachment agenda since the election in 2016.
This isn’t surprising considering who comprises the media. Many current media figures have worked for Democratic causes and candidates in the past. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews used to work for President Jimmy Carter and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill. CNN’s Chris Cuomo is brother to the current Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and son of former Democratic governor Mario Cuomo. CNN’s Jake Tapper used to work for Handgun Control Inc. and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was the White House communications director for President Bill Clinton.
Intriguingly, in 2017 Politico featured an article discussing the media bubble that many journalists live in. The authors of the article wonder how the media got the 2016 election so wrong. “The election made clear; the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers. What went so wrong? What’s still wrong?”
The article notes that, “Nearly 90 percent of all internet publishing employees work in a county where Clinton won, and 75 percent of them work in a county that she won by more than 30 percentage points. When you add in the shrinking number of newspaper jobs, 72 percent of all internet publishing or newspaper employees work in a county that Clinton won. By this measure, of course, Clinton was the national media’s candidate.”
These anecdotes are fascinating. Even if the mainstream media doesn’t deliberately report with a liberal bias, it’s likely they can’t help but be deeply influenced by their environment. If the national media got the 2016 election so wrong, shouldn’t they try to correct things to prepare for 2020? Yet by any measure, it would seem the media has moved further left since 2016.
Meanwhile, many Americans will keep getting their news from alternative sources. Until the mainstream media makes major reforms, most Americans will continue to tune them out and disregard much of what they say. It’s far past time for Americans to have an honest, unbiased and truly free press.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Zachary Mettler is a writer/analyst for the Daily Citizen at Focus on the Family. In his role, he writes about current political issues, U.S. history, political philosophy, and culture. Mettler earned his Bachelor’s degree from William Jessup University and is an alumnus of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. In addition to the Daily Citizen, his written pieces have appeared in the Daily Wire, the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner, Newsweek, Townhall, the Daily Signal, the Christian Post, Charisma News and other outlets.
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