Only 6% of Republicans Trust TV News: New Poll
Americans have such a lack of confidence in the legacy media’s reporting that only six out of every 100 Republicans have any confidence in television news, according to a new poll. Their views reflect the deep distrust of the American people: Only 16% of all U.S. citizens say they can believe what they see on television. About one in five Americans trusts newspapers, a Gallup poll released on Wednesday found.
Gallup tracks public confidence in “14 core institutions” every year. This year’s results find that the American people’s trust has declined nearly across the board since the waning days of the coronavirus global pandemic. Strong, bipartisan majorities of Americans trust the military (69%) and small businesses (70%). Americans generally express low confidence in Congress, big business, and the criminal justice system.
But the two parties differ sharply on which other institutions deserve public support.
“Republicans have far more confidence than Democrats in the police and the church,” reported Gallup.
That contrast comes into stark view when it comes to the media. Only 6% of Republicans told pollsters they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the news reported by broadcast media networks, while 25% of Democrats trust TV news — a 25% gap. Similarly, 8% of Republican or Republican-leaning voters trust newspapers, as compared to 35% of Democrats, a 27-point confidence gap.
The Gallup poll follows another poll from Reuters last month that found Americans have less confidence in the media than any other country of the 46 nations surveyed.
The reason is not hard to discern: President Biden has received less negative coverage than any president in 30 years, including fellow Democrats Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. Yet the press corps’ coverage of President Donald Trump hovered around 90% negative throughout his four years in office, according to the Media Research Center.
The differences in reporting are evident even when it comes to something as mundane as the presidents’ dessert choices. “Trump gets 2 scoops of ice cream, everyone else gets 1,” reported CNN in 2017. Apropos of nothing, CNN worked ice cream into news that the U.S. military had killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. “President Trump dined on ice cream as news of the airstrike broke,” CNN tweeted.
President Trump dined on ice cream as news of the airstrike broke https://t.co/iP5fbnSfDH pic.twitter.com/SmrqI6zN0Y
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 3, 2020
An embarrassed CNN employee told Fox News, “Our newsroom is so jaded and anti-Trump that it posted this tweet, which lacked any journalistic merit.”
Yet the legacy media have covered Joe Biden’s love affair with ice cream with as much affection as the president has for the sweet confection. They have never presented Biden’s sweet tooth as anything other than utterly charming and relatable. Phil Mattingly “reported” that “the president made an unscheduled stop for a very crucial double scoop of vanilla chocolate chip ice cream in a — sorry, chocolate chip ice cream in a waffle cone.” (He did not note that everyone else got one scoop.)
“These are the things the White House appreciates that people report on,” Mattingly noted.
The American people would place greater trust in the media if they devoted more time to covering the viewers’ priorities, such as surging crime, rising inflation, an uncontrolled border with Mexico, and unresponsive public school bureaucracies.
The media’s sycophantic coverage of the Biden administration has even created hesitancy about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. “I don’t doubt there’s some real f**kery with reporting adverse vax reactions,” tweeted comic podcaster Tim Dillon. “I don’t trust media at all.”
I don’t doubt there’s some real fuckery with reporting adverse vax reactions. I don’t trust media at all. I do know Covid has fucked up some perfectly healthy people I know for months (perhaps permanently) and killed some as well. These are both true.
— Tim Dillon (@TimJDillon) July 15, 2021
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