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A recent Gallup
survey shows that Americans are beginning to renew
their trust in the media. While still lower than
previous years, it appears that the confidence level in
the media is rebounding from the low levels seen last
year. Half of the people surveyed say that they have a
great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media,
while the other half says they don’t. As can be
predicted, the survey’s answers fall squarely along
political party lines.
While 69% of Republicans say that they have very little
or no trust in the mass media, 70% of Democrats say that
they have a great deal or fair amount of trust.
Independents were split 50/50.
Eight in 10 Republicans (81%) say the news media are too
liberal, while 15% say they are about right, and just 3%
say they are too conservative. Among Democrats, a
majority (57%) says the news media are just about right,
while the rest are almost equally divided in their
description of the news media as too liberal (18%) and
too conservative (23%).
When Gallup (a Trylon client) first started asking this
question in 1972, trust and confidence in the mass media
was much higher than it is today. At that time 68% of
Americans expressed confidence in the media, and the
high point on this measure came in 1976, when 72% of
respondents said they had a great deal or fair amount of
trust and confidence in the media.
Gallup resurrected the question in 1997, and found that
this sentiment had declined substantially. Still, a
majority of Americans (53%) expressed confidence in the
media. These results showed only modest variations
between 1997 and 2003 before dropping substantially to
44% last year, matching the low point of the trend.
The revelations of the past few years, such as the video
news release scandals of the Bush administration, the
public embarrassment of news reporters being found to
simply make up stories, and other journalistic lows have
undermined the confidence of the public in all media.
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