Gallup Poll: Trust in TV news drops to new low in America
Gallup, the national survey organization, has announced that Americans’ confidence in television news is at a new low by one percentage point, with only 21 percent of adults expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. This marks a decline from 27 percent last year and from 46 percent when Gallup started tracking confidence in television news in 1993.
Gallup says Americans have grown more negative about the media in recent years, as they have about many other U.S. institutions, such as public education, and the direction of the country in general.
Still, confidence in television news could plummet further after the high-profile errors CNN and Fox News made in their coverage of the intensely anticipated Supreme Court healthcare law ruling that some have called a “Dewey defeats Truman” moment.
Liberals and moderates lost so much confidence in television news this year — 11 and 10 points, respectively — that their views are now more akin to conservatives’ views. This marks a turnaround from the pattern seen since 2009, in which liberals expressed more confidence than conservatives.
Many of the groups that lost confidence in television news also tended to lose confidence in newspapers, though to a lesser degree. Where are people going for news and information? Blogs, peer opinion sharing online, YouTube, social media and the vast array of agenda-driven “news” sites that support a particular point of view.
Click here for the full Gallup report.
Category: Reputation management
It is difficult these days to trust the news media period. Most now push political or social agendas, or staffed with lazy and or incompetent journalists, get stories wrong when they have no agenda to push. The print media is not far behind, for those still bothering to read newspapers, in print or online. I can only imagine what Edward R. Murrow, Harry Reasoner and Walter Cronkite would be saying if they were with us today!