Media trust continues to spiral down to 32%

[hrugner]

It's sad to see it fall this fast. It would be nice if some establishments got their shit together and really started providing the level of accuracy people expect from media in a way that is easily referencable and can handle the immense amount of corrections needed as stories develop.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

32% say they have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of trust
14% of Republicans express trust, down from 32% last year
Confidence drops among younger and older Americans

[apepi]

Maybe one of the reasons is because we are calling them media instead of journalist/news. They are no longer built around trying to tell the truth and help the general populace but entertain them. Good journalism is almost dead, it doesn't make any money.

[hrugner]

Accuracy and facts don't matter when people are whipped into a populist frenzy out of dissatisfaction over one thing or another.

I think they do matter. At the moment, news is so steeped in narrative rather than fact, that your average viewer feels insulted. This would be a perfect time for a news site to do broader fact checking and aggregate perspectives rather than simply launching another perspective into the media sewage.

[Macaquerie]

Most people bitching about the media don't give a damn about making sure that it's fair and unbiased, if anything they want the media to be even MORE slanted, but only toward positions that they agree with naturally. Someone who reads Breitbart because they think CNN is too biased is not someone who cares much about responsible journalism. Ultimately, the proper function of the news media is entertainment, expecting it to do anything else will only leave you disappointed.

[Independent voter]

One of the best news sources in the world is The Christian Science Monitor.

Looking at their front page, here's a story that you won't find anywhere else: Why US military officials are concerned about climate change

I know the word "christian" will trigger some, but it's a secular newspaper, maybe somewhat left wing.

[Deletedaccount1]

It depends on the news source but generally I don't trust much of what I read on the news.

[Noctiphobia]

Politifact has a very rigorous and transparent methodology explained on their site, yet republicans claim the site is biased in favour of liberals.

I'm not sure how you can get more transparent and open than that.

Having a rigorous and transparent methodology is one thing, and following it is another. Usually they do follow it, but sometimes they don't. Like giving Hillary Clinton's claims of wage gap "Mostly True", because she didn't include the false part that women get less for the same job, but instead just implied it in the next sentence, which they conveniently ommitted. I must agree, though, that usually when they decide to cover something, it's well sourced and usually factual.
The problem is the way they decide to pick stories. Like doing one on Trump's flip-flopping, but completely disregarding Hillary's flip-flopping (for example on gay marriage, which she opposed before, and now she claims she was always a supporter). Well, anyway, politifact is one of the lesser problems, if they actually covered everything possible, they'd be pretty much unbiased.
Though I give them credit for correcting old entries, that's really rare.

The problem is the blatant support that most, if not all, media outlets, give to one candidate (which in most cases is Hillary Clinton). Like Reuters cutting air recently, when it showed Trump on positive light, or CNN editing Trump's tweet to remove "Crooked" from it, or that one news station I don't remember, who blurred the Trump shirt of a man who was shown as a hero. Not even starting with Huffington Post (or on the other end of spectrum, Breitbart). I don't know of any mass media outlet that's even close to being unbiased in either direction.

[Kapadons]

News is just fine. The issue people are having is they can't separate political opinion shows from news.

Try it today. Turn on Fox News and watch it all day. Until fox and friends or O'Rielly comes on, it's pretty much just news. Do the same thing with your local news affiliate for the nightly news. Abc, CBS, NBC. No political slant, just reporting on shit in your area.

You could claim there is a bias in the form of what news stories they actually show, but they don't have some jack ass on their blasting trump or Hillary or blowing BLM.

[unbound]

Accuracy and facts don't matter when people are whipped into a populist frenzy out of dissatisfaction over one thing or another.

Accuracy and facts do matter. The problem is that the journalists don't do this very often anymore. They, rather mindlessly, just report "he said / she said" and leave it at that. Most news reporting is missing critical context information, and most news reporting is about whatever will attract the audience.

Heck, there are actually positions in news organizations called fact checkers. WTF? Why is that even a position? One of the primary roles of a journalist is to be a fact checker. That such a position exists proves that journalists aren't actually journalists anymore.

Even worse is that the few real journalists left are getting slowly starved out of the business.

I'm sorry that this is 20 minutes long, but it is well worth the watch to understand how bad things have gotten:

[Deleted]

With the amount of shit and lies in the past year, no wonder anyone belives them. The best journalism you can do is read everything and make up your own mind. As far as presidental elections go- fuck all and watch as much youtube videos of candidate speeches.

[zmp]

People losing faith in media? That must be Russias fault also...

/sarcasm

[May90]

I think saying "I trust media" is just as silly as saying "I do not trust media". You aren't supposed to "trust" or "not trust", you are supposed to think for yourself on whether what is being said is truth or not. If I say, "Moon is made of cheese", then, regardless of whether you trust me, will you agree with me? Or, if I say "2+2=4", then even if you think I am a big liar, will you disagree?

[Narwal]

It's not about accuracy, in 99.99999% of the time the media is accurate. It's about slant and motives. The media seemingly doesn't want to just relay information any longer, they want to convince you of something and relay the facts to lead you to their conclusions.

[Deleted]

I tried reading different US papers the last time I was there and... almost every article is a heavy biased personal opinion piece.

US newspapers (and their websites) seem more like "blogs" than newspapers. I havent seen anything on that scale in Europe yet (although UK papers are also pretty bad).

[dextersmith]

I don't think the media is any different now, it's that people have become more critical and asking more questions. It compounds when anyone with a youtube or other social media account thinks they're a news reporter.

[zenkai]

It's sad to see it fall this fast. It would be nice if some establishments got their shit together and really started providing the level of accuracy people expect from media in a way that is easily referencable and can handle the immense amount of corrections needed as stories develop.

I can't believe it's that high, oh wait I can.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think the media is any different now, it's that people have become more critical and asking more questions. It compounds when anyone with a youtube or other social media account thinks they're a news reporter.

I think journalist use to care about integrity, now it's just about sensationalizing to sell adds.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not about accuracy, in 99.99999% of the time the media is accurate. It's about slant and motives. The media seemingly doesn't want to just relay information any longer, they want to convince you of something and relay the facts to lead you to their conclusions.

Like how they pointed out all the stuff Powell said about Trump but ignored what he said about Clinton?

[Jibjub]

One of the best news sources in the world is The Christian Science Monitor.

Looking at their front page, here's a story that you won't find anywhere else: Why US military officials are concerned about climate change

I know the word "christian" will trigger some, but it's a secular newspaper, maybe somewhat left wing.

"Someone left wing" has already pretty much shown that it probably isn't a great news source. News shouldn't be one wing or another ... by definition, news CAN'T be one wing or another...

[Deleted]

Politifact has a very rigorous and transparent

hahahahahahhahahahahahaha

no

[Fencers]

As long as advertisements are involved in the selling of news, one can never fully trust those who sell news.

[hrugner]

Politifact has a very rigorous and transparent methodology explained on their site, yet republicans claim the site is biased in favour of liberals.

I'm not sure how you can get more transparent and open than that.

In the end though, what information is being given you? They place their examined quotes in a statistical context of selected quotes from that source, rather than all quotes, so they don't really give you a scale of honesty for that one individual. They organize their information around quotes, so it isn't easily searchable for facts outside of those statements, so it isn't a resource for information other than a scale for honesty of these individuals. It lacks sufficient context to do the job it purports to do, and it's structured in a way that it can do no other jobs. So what's it for?