Another Poll Confirms the Media’s Credibility is Cratering

A new poll from Morning Consult has found that American’s trust in the credibility of the media has cratered to new lows.

According to the results from Morning Consult, “The share of U.S. adults who said nine leading media outlets — including CBS and The New York Times — were credible has dropped roughly nine percentage points since December 2016, from 60.6 percent to an average of 51.2 percent today. Last year, the average credibility rating sat at 55.4 percent.”

The poll found that this large drop in Americans trusting the media was driven in large part by Republican affiliated voters. The percentage of Republicans who trust the media was down 16% since 2016 the poll found. Only 40% of Republicans trust in the media to provide reliable reporting, while 65% of Democrats do.

Additionally, among Republicans the credibility drop was even larger among specific liberal-leaning outlets like The New York Times, CNN and MSNBC.

While 52% of Republicans trusted The New York Times in December 2016, today that number stands at just 29%. And while 51% of Republicans found CNN credible, and 28% thought the same about MSNBC in 2016, today just 27% of Republican voters trust either of those left-leaning news outlets.

The release from Morning Consult noted that Americans are divided over the media’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Recent polling shows a country divided over the job that news media is doing: Fifty-five percent of respondents in a March 13-22 Gallup survey disapproved of the news media’s handling of the coronavirus in the United States,” Morning Consult noted.

One of the reasons the trust in the mainstream media among Republicans has fallen so precariously is because many media members have become more openly hostile to conservatives in recent years. As The Daily Citizen wrote on April 21, one MSNBC guest called protesters petitioning their state government’s to reopen their economies “Nazis” and “racists.” Another MSNBC guest said these protesters “just want black and brown people to die.”

Additionally, The Daily Citizen has also previously written about a study conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center which found that the media gave overwhelmingly negative coverage to President Trump in the first 100 days of his administration. “Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days was not merely negative in overall terms. It was unfavorable on every dimension. There was not a single major topic where Trump’s coverage was more positive than negative,” the Shorenstein Center found.

It seems many Americans, specifically Republican voters, are picking up on what the Shorenstein Center’s study reveals.

“The latest Morning Consult survey results suggest stronger political divisions in perceptions of the country’s news brands,” Morning Consult concluded.