5 ms·

38% of population has no trust in the media, 28% has not very much confidence. About 2/3 of folks don't trust the media. I wish "the media" would go back to rep

38% of population has no trust in the media, 28% has not very much confidence. About 2/3 of folks don't trust the media. I wish "the media" would go back to reporting the news instead of repeating talking points.

themedia 4y ago
rdtwo 4y ago
What’s wrong with the other 34%? Are they the folks buying magnetic health bracelets and random organic supplements?
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Those are generally the “no trust” crowd. The “trust media” crowd are the bourgeois who watched the Iraq War lies then tell you with a straight face the same people are being honest with you about Ukraine.
  - cyberlurker 4y ago
    Media aside, do you really think those two wars are comparable?
    - zerocrates 4y ago
      You could draw maybe a closer analogue to the first Gulf War than to the Iraq War. Of course the direct involvement of Russia makes neither all that close of a comparison.
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      The second iraq war? Sure. Both are imperialist invasions based on false premises and lies
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
      No — Ukraine is closer to our illicit Cold War activities in Latin America, where we train questionable militias who engage in ethnic attacks. But I do think the media is openly propagandizing, including false information from “permanent state” pundits, eg former military officials. And my linking the two is that it’s literally the same people — eg, Victoria Nuland, who after Iraq moved on to Euromaidan and the Ukraine mess. > From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, exercising an influential role during the Iraq War. From 2005 to 2008, during President George W. Bush's second term, Nuland served as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, where she concentrated on mobilizing European support for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. > Nuland was the lead U.S. point person for the Revolution of Dignity, establishing loan guarantees to Ukraine, including a $1 billion loan guarantee in 2014, and the provisions of non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military and border guard. Along with Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, she is seen as a leading supporter of defensive weapons delivery to Ukraine. Why would the bureaucrats who lied to us and failed in Iraq and Afghanistan be honest people leading us in the right direction now?
afavour 4y ago
> I wish "the media" would go back to reporting the news instead of repeating talking points. I see this said a lot but I don't think that's a simple request, assuming what we're really saying here is "objective facts, not opinions". There's a finite amount of news you can report so which objective facts you choose to show your readers is in itself a subjective decision of "newsworthiness". And how do you present that news to your audience? Anything other than a chronological list of events (which would be an awful user experience) requires subjective judgement of importance. I’m also very dubious that you could build a sustainable business around such an idea. I think a lot of people say they want objective news but when presented with a choice they’ll favour media that caters to their existing biases. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of garbage media out there today and it can absolutely get better. But I think people are striving for an entirely objective media that simply doesn't exist, and never has.
- danjoredd 4y ago
  Its a problem with the 24/hr newscycle. Back in the day you would hear the news at 6 on your television, or on your radio. Now, due to the constant need for content, news has gotten more extreme. Fox and CNN need something constantly on their channels, news sites need constant content on their websites, etc. The news at 6 is no longer a thing, and that fact feels like it has hurt just about everything
  - the_af 4y ago
    I think the comment you are replying to is saying that "the news" cannot be reported on objectively simply because there is more "news" that can be reported on than any given news organization's available bandwidth (with print papers this is immediately obvious, since the limitation is physical space; but it also affects any other medium). The act of choosing what to report and what to leave out is a subjective act, just like the same photo cropped differently can tell opposite stories! So there is yellow and bad journalism, but even "good" journalism cannot be objective.
    - danjoredd 4y ago
subsubzero 4y ago
The problem I see is instead of reporting facts, I see alot of stories with these words in their title - "maybe", "could", "possibly, "potentially". I think its all about churning out volume(of stories) to generate clicks. Maybe the solution is to get a paper subscription.
rainsford 4y ago
I think it's easy to blame "the media" for poll results like this and to be fair I do think they deserve some of the blame. But I also don't think Americans' trust in the media is shaped by reasonable (or even coherent) criteria, and for that reason "just report the news" seems unlikely to be the solution. Were the issue of trust really about a fairly and accurately reporting news, you'd expect the drop in trust in "mass media" to coincide with the rise of alternative media that does a better job on just reporting the news. But instead what you see is a rise in source that are basically just partisan propaganda barely even pretending to be legitimate news sources. This is especially true on the right side of the American political spectrum, where the biggest drop in mass media trust happens to be. If Republican problems with mainstream media is that the media doesn't just report the news, it seems odd that this would have led to the rise of Fox News and then Newsmax and OAN when Fox wasn't partisan enough. This isn't just a Republican problem, although as they have the biggest shift in media trust I think it's fair to use them as the example. But overall, I think a simple explanation is that Americans increasingly see facts as subjective, and therefore the trustworthy news source is the one that provides me with facts that fit my existing worldview. There's a super obvious Trump divergence on the trust graph between Republicans and Democrats. Was it the case that Democrats suddenly thought the media was doing a better job just reporting the news and Republicans somehow came to the opposite conclusion? Or was it just that the Democrats liked the negative Trump coverage and Republicans didn't?

themedia 4y ago

rdtwo 4y ago

What’s wrong with the other 34%? Are they the folks buying magnetic health bracelets and random organic supplements?

zmgsabst 4y ago
Those are generally the “no trust” crowd. The “trust media” crowd are the bourgeois who watched the Iraq War lies then tell you with a straight face the same people are being honest with you about Ukraine.
- cyberlurker 4y ago
  Media aside, do you really think those two wars are comparable?
  - zerocrates 4y ago
    You could draw maybe a closer analogue to the first Gulf War than to the Iraq War. Of course the direct involvement of Russia makes neither all that close of a comparison.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    The second iraq war? Sure. Both are imperialist invasions based on false premises and lies
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    No — Ukraine is closer to our illicit Cold War activities in Latin America, where we train questionable militias who engage in ethnic attacks. But I do think the media is openly propagandizing, including false information from “permanent state” pundits, eg former military officials. And my linking the two is that it’s literally the same people — eg, Victoria Nuland, who after Iraq moved on to Euromaidan and the Ukraine mess. > From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, exercising an influential role during the Iraq War. From 2005 to 2008, during President George W. Bush's second term, Nuland served as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, where she concentrated on mobilizing European support for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. > Nuland was the lead U.S. point person for the Revolution of Dignity, establishing loan guarantees to Ukraine, including a $1 billion loan guarantee in 2014, and the provisions of non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military and border guard. Along with Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, she is seen as a leading supporter of defensive weapons delivery to Ukraine. Why would the bureaucrats who lied to us and failed in Iraq and Afghanistan be honest people leading us in the right direction now?

afavour 4y ago

> I wish "the media" would go back to reporting the news instead of repeating talking points. I see this said a lot but I don't think that's a simple request, assuming what we're really saying here is "objective facts, not opinions". There's a finite amount of news you can report so which objective facts you choose to show your readers is in itself a subjective decision of "newsworthiness". And how do you present that news to your audience? Anything other than a chronological list of events (which would be an awful user experience) requires subjective judgement of importance. I’m also very dubious that you could build a sustainable business around such an idea. I think a lot of people say they want objective news but when presented with a choice they’ll favour media that caters to their existing biases. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of garbage media out there today and it can absolutely get better. But I think people are striving for an entirely objective media that simply doesn't exist, and never has.

danjoredd 4y ago
Its a problem with the 24/hr newscycle. Back in the day you would hear the news at 6 on your television, or on your radio. Now, due to the constant need for content, news has gotten more extreme. Fox and CNN need something constantly on their channels, news sites need constant content on their websites, etc. The news at 6 is no longer a thing, and that fact feels like it has hurt just about everything
- the_af 4y ago
  I think the comment you are replying to is saying that "the news" cannot be reported on objectively simply because there is more "news" that can be reported on than any given news organization's available bandwidth (with print papers this is immediately obvious, since the limitation is physical space; but it also affects any other medium). The act of choosing what to report and what to leave out is a subjective act, just like the same photo cropped differently can tell opposite stories! So there is yellow and bad journalism, but even "good" journalism cannot be objective.
  - danjoredd 4y ago

subsubzero 4y ago

The problem I see is instead of reporting facts, I see alot of stories with these words in their title - "maybe", "could", "possibly, "potentially". I think its all about churning out volume(of stories) to generate clicks. Maybe the solution is to get a paper subscription.

rainsford 4y ago

I think it's easy to blame "the media" for poll results like this and to be fair I do think they deserve some of the blame. But I also don't think Americans' trust in the media is shaped by reasonable (or even coherent) criteria, and for that reason "just report the news" seems unlikely to be the solution. Were the issue of trust really about a fairly and accurately reporting news, you'd expect the drop in trust in "mass media" to coincide with the rise of alternative media that does a better job on just reporting the news. But instead what you see is a rise in source that are basically just partisan propaganda barely even pretending to be legitimate news sources. This is especially true on the right side of the American political spectrum, where the biggest drop in mass media trust happens to be. If Republican problems with mainstream media is that the media doesn't just report the news, it seems odd that this would have led to the rise of Fox News and then Newsmax and OAN when Fox wasn't partisan enough. This isn't just a Republican problem, although as they have the biggest shift in media trust I think it's fair to use them as the example. But overall, I think a simple explanation is that Americans increasingly see facts as subjective, and therefore the trustworthy news source is the one that provides me with facts that fit my existing worldview. There's a super obvious Trump divergence on the trust graph between Republicans and Democrats. Was it the case that Democrats suddenly thought the media was doing a better job just reporting the news and Republicans somehow came to the opposite conclusion? Or was it just that the Democrats liked the negative Trump coverage and Republicans didn't?