Brian C. Joondeph – Media trust is at an all-time low, a majority of Americans believing that, “Most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.” An Axios commissioned  survey found that only 46 percent of Americans trusted traditional media, the lowest number ever recorded in the 20 years of this survey.

Gallup found similar distrust of the media, with only 40 percent of Americans having “a great deal” or even “a fair amount” of confidence that the media reports the news “fully accurately, and fairly”. The low point was a 32 percent level of trust in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected president and he correctly labeled the media as “fake news.”

Twenty years ago, media trust was much higher, in the mid 50 percent range, despite Dan Rather at that time, a major network news anchor, lying about George W Bush’s National Guard service.

In other words, the media is lying to us and we are catching on to the lies. Continue reading →