Trust in news collapses to historic low

Trust in news collapses to historic low

Americans’ confidence in newspapers and television news has plummeted to an all-time low, according to the latest annual Gallup survey of trust in U.S. institutions.

Surveys of at least 1,000 U.S. adults conducted annually between 1993 and 2022

Television news is today considered the second-least trusted institution in the country, following Congress, according to the poll.

While other institutions have also experienced precipitous declines, including banks and the medical system, others — like small business and the military — have held steady over the past few decades.

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/08/news-republicans-democrats-…

Could this account for the rise of podcast networks?

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Will the news report the “SHOCKING ALARMING” findings that their spew isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit? Or will they skip to the next bit of advertising dressed up as “news”?

Steve

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Not surprising since a recent Chief Executive claimed to his followers that a broad swath of the traditional news sources were simply fake and his favorite source was clearly entertaining by spouting sludge. Ever since the rule that dictated that both sides of a story was trashed, nearly all news sources have drifted to partisan poles which leads the opposing side to consider them questionable.

I’ve just spent six months on a ship where the only broadcast news sources were MSNBC and Fox (I don’t consider CNBC as valid financial news either). They did have BBC, which has become a fluffier CNN clone and Sky (which was the best of the lot - but certainly not a US source).

Sure, there’s the New Your Times and the Washington Post, but even those have become associated with one half of the spectrum.

So yes, based on the selective portions of any story compared between the two US news sources I had available, I would say that I wouldn’t completely trust either of them. Between the two, it seemed that while MSNBC omitted portions of the news they didn’t like and sometimes “spun” the facts a bit too much, Fox seemed more likely to simply fabricate “facts” out of nowhere and was basically useless as a consistently reliable source of news.

While we can’t “trust” the news, those who seek the truth can generally discern the important nuggets and paint their own picture.

Jeff

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Just the facts, ma’am. Stay in the center of this chart.

https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

Wendy

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Lately I have seen a bunch of uTube videos touting “Terrifying News that Will Change Everything.” Click bait crap to avoid. Maybe I should use the thumbs down button…

The Captain

The American free press has always been agenda driven. The public is more than educated enough to know this through and through.

Viewership of TV or newspapers is down. Not trusting them is another short hand way of saying I do not get my news through them.

Internet news is way up. Google and NYT are leading the way. If you find a poll saying they are untrustworthy it would only be a small group of Fox watchers.

<i…all news sources have drifted to partisan poles which leads the opposing side to consider them questionable.

Anyone with a healthy skepticism gene can sort out the slant, like the choice of words they use, the voice infection, the photo they show of the person they are talking about. The pix are almost amusing. If the outlet doesn’t like someone, they will show the most uncomplimentary pic possible, the person in mid bellow or face screwed up in rage. If the outlet likes someone, they will show a pic of the person calm and composed, with a nice smile.

It is the things that I have been griping about, for years. The nonstop hype and hysteria. Everything is SHOCKING,ALARMING like it’s the end of the world. The advertising being passed off as “news”. Who the he!!! cares what Britney or Meghan is doing? I can tell you what they are doing: seeking publicity and money, and the media eagerly helps them with both.

Steve

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NewsWeak center? Give me a break. I dropped the subscription 40 or 50 years ago when they scrambled my letter to the Editor to say the opposite of its intended meaning.

The Captain

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Keep in mind that chart is measuring bias rather than factuality.

Avoiding bias is good. But sticking to facts is far more important.

—Peter

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Anyone with a healthy skepticism gene can sort out the slant…

And there is the problem. Too many don’t have that gene.

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When The Wall Street Journal is considered centrist and The Economist leaning left, we are living in interesting times.

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When The Wall Street Journal is considered centrist and The Economist leaning left, we are living in interesting times.

Interesting and complicated times, yes.

But something else notable is happening. The “intellectual” (an ever more arcahic term) bases of left and right have largely collapsed, utterly undercutting soggy old verities.

What quasi-front page editors and censors whether at NYT, Huffpost, Murdochlands or Yelp still implt they mean by “left” “center” and “right” is some version of Marxist on the left and Libertarian on the right (althogh authoritarians of monarchical and theological strains still exist, those are thoroughly disreputable to the scribblers).

These labels are now mostly insane, stupid, or ancient artifacts reanimated. Marxism now competes with LiteralNoahsArkian nutty Abrahamistic sects for the title of most reality denying and faith based, while Libertarianism whether Randist (Atlas Shrugged’s immortal pistons scene) or Nozickian (how long has it been since I met a fervent “Libertarian” who even knew his name?) are hopelessly outdated by facts and events.

“Fact based” is the ideology that has become the secret gold of the realms of power, even as fantasy is the tool powerful institutions use to sell and control.

Happy Sunday everybody!

david fb

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Nozickian (how long has it been since I met a fervent “Libertarian” who even knew his name?)

Never heard of him.

There, Nozick argues that only a minimal state limited to the narrow functions of protection against “force, fraud, theft, and administering courts of law”[8] could be justified, as any more extensive state would violate people’s rights.

Nozick challenged the partial conclusion of John Rawls’s Second Principle of Justice of his A Theory of Justice, that “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.”

He rejected the notion of inalienable rights advanced by Locke and most contemporary capitalist-oriented libertarian academics, writing in Anarchy, State, and Utopia that the typical notion of a “free system” would allow adults to voluntarily enter into non-coercive slave contracts.*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick

These are ideas I agree with even if I don’t have Nozick’s scholarly qualifications. Born November 16, 1938, were he alive he would be two weeks my senior. It was a good month to be born!


…hopelessly outdated by facts and events.

Maybe that’s why the world is in such a mess, it followed the wrong tine at the fork in the road.

The Captain

  • Marriage is one example of a “non-coercive slave contract.”
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Lately I have seen a bunch of uTube videos touting “Terrifying News that Will Change Everything.” Click bait crap to avoid. Maybe I should use the thumbs down button…

Thumbs up, thumbs down, just loading the page, watching more than 30 seconds, all of these actions cause the algorithm to push the video up the list of what might be shown/pushed to people.

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Hey Captain!

I hoped you would favor my post with a look as I did wonder if you were a conscious or unconscious Nozickian, because I definitely knew your èare one, and an honest one at that (meaning accepting and seeking to ameliorate some of the problematics that accompany so radical a stance).

I am a long time (1971) student, deep admirer, and critic of both Rawls and Nozick. They laid “it” out for their own time with clarity and mutual respect. I think time and human economic/cultural evolution has passed them both by. They both were what once were called “moral philosophers”. Morality may be going…

Meanwhile, here tonight at my favorite bar/cafe on my small Mallorquin town plaza (a good substitute for Boccaccio’s villa outside of Florence during the plague where people came to survive never discussing what they fled) I witnessed a family: a Russian patriarch (50ish, Rolex watch, trainer sculpted chest cum arm muscles [legs were meh], beautifully tailored casual linen shirt and vacation shorts with almost worn out sandals), his (still) stunning blonde 40ish wife (rivière of diamonds accented with sapphires around her neck, otherwise totally vacation casual light dress tailored to disguise mid-aged fattening), two daughters, four sons – three sons of draft age. The father, speaking excellent Amsterdam style international English, spoke to the proprietor about the Real Estate market, especially high rentals vs. ownership.

The world is moving right along to I do not know where.

david fb

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Oh, and look at this

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/10/world/europe/russia-recru…

that showed up while I ate my pincho morino and gawked and eavesdropped.

david fb

Marriage is one example of a “non-coercive slave contract.”

This tells me you understand neither slavery nor marriage.

—Peter

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I hoped you would favor my post with a look as I did wonder if you were a conscious or unconscious Nozickian, because I definitely knew your èare one, and an honest one at that (meaning accepting and seeking to ameliorate some of the problematics that accompany so radical a stance).

David, you are out of bounds, in foul territory. I do not accept labels, they are dangerous, they can hide your true identity, they can get you killed. I’m not Nozickian, neither conscious nor unconscious. I’m just me. Sometimes you have to accept a label because no one has yet invented a better term. Atheism is a case in point. What do you call an atheist who believes in gods? What do you call a capitalist who gives his fortune away? What do you call a philanderer who cares for unwed mothers? Life is too complex to put simple, misleading, insulting, and dangerous labels on people. Once you dehumanize people with a label its easy to kill them, no blame, no shame, no remorse, just house cleaning.

BTW, why would I care about the extravaganza of a Russian patriarch and entourage?
Since we are into labels, are Smith, Rand, and Nozick now immoral philosophers? Are cannibals immoral or just protein deficient? A Jared Diamond hypothesis.

The Captain

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This tells me you understand neither slavery nor marriage.

If marriage is so good how come there are so many divorces? I know, I know, it’s not the institution, it’s the people who ain’t good.

BTW, have you heard about sadomasochism? Voluntary slavery with the emphasis on ‘voluntary?’ As in ‘non-coercive’ = ‘volunary’?

The Captain

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david fb,

The intellectual collapse has not happened on the left.