Media Mistrust: The Tipping Point
According to the latest Gallup Poll, Americans passed a milestone four years ago and have never looked back: More than half of us now have little or no confidence that mass media–newspapers, TV and radio–report the news fully, fairly and accurately.
Thirty years ago, only 26 percent felt that way. The gap then between Republicans and Democrats was only 10 percent. Today it is a chasm, with twice as many Republicans mistrustful of the news they are getting.
In the wake of Watergate, the public didn’t blame the messengers for delivering political bad news. In the post-9/11 world, they do and accuse them of distorting it.
Behind this change is the difference in the amount of news we get and how we get it. Before 24/7 cable and the Web, newspaper front pages and the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC packaged our perception of the world and, for better or worse, there were few other sources of information to challenge what they gave us.
Walter Cronkite signed off every night, saying “That’s the way it is,†and most Americans had no way to doubt it.
Today, there are millions of Walter Cronkites on cable and the Web to decide for themselves the way it is and, although they still depend on MSM for most of the hard news, they decide for themselves what it means.
Mistrust and rancor are part of the price we pay for this privilege, but after the Bush-Cheney era gives way to a likely Democratic Administration, will partisan dissatisfaction with the news shift as well? Or do Republicans have the patent on media-bashing?
Cross-posted from my blog.
4 Responses to “Media Mistrust: The Tipping Point”
I don’t think the past is a good indicator of where the future is going re MSM, because the nature of news outlets has changed to much.
It was the case, that ‘news’ had a dedication to providing news ad a public service. Now news is delivered as a vehicle for making rpofti. It may not be dead yet, but he public service concept is definitely on life support.
The next administration will be covered far more according to corporate interests. Public opinion will, therefore, be shaped accordingly.
The blogosphere, as a replacemtn for MSM, is degenaring fast to a talking heads format.
The future looks grim, indeed.
Journalistic standards have definitely deteriorated since Cronkite’s day. Nowadays we get a few soundbites that are replayed incessantly with so-called ‘experts’ putting their own spin on it based on a personal agenda or partisan bias. After multiple interpretations, the original facts get buried in a massive pile of spin.
The closest thing to this phenomena, is interviewing witnesses after an accident. Each account is a little distorted by the individual’s point of view. None match each other. The truth is somewhere in the middle of all of the accounts.
The news is now frustratingly vapid and mass-produced with all spontaneity and intellectual thought removed. Stations spend hours on plane crashes, hostage situations, shootings, missing blondes, Hollywood bimbos, etc.
All of this, of course, makes it easier for our political leaders to deceive us.
domajot,
When the Democratic administration brings back the Fairness Doctrine, no one except the netroot types will trust the media. The right side of the political spectrum will see the Fairness Doctrine as censorship. The left will probably use it to censor. That will lower the trust level for everyone.
Also, anyone who thinks that Cronkite or any other part of the media was trustwrothy is foolish. Even today the MSM keeps acting like the internet is not there. Image how Cronkite would be viewed if everything he said could be seconded guessed.
‘Also, anyone who thinks that Cronkite or any other part of the media was trustwrothy is foolish. Even today the MSM keeps acting like the internet is not there. Image how Cronkite would be viewed if everything he said could be seconded guessed.’
SD- Of course that’s an easy statement to make, since its impossible to prove or disprove a hypothetical. You could easily apply that standard to Abe Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson and come up with the same conclusion.
I’m glad I was never that cynical.