Distrusting the Mainstream Media By Chris Knight (Florida)
There is movement at the station. Mainstream medias source, Forbes.com, which still does high quality reporting, notes that according to a survey by Edelman’s Annual Trust Barometer, less than half of all Americans acknowledge any kind of trust in the mainstream media. For example, fifty-six percent of Americans, said they agreed with the following statement: "Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations." That does not bide well for the mainstream media, and of course, as an alternative journalist, I welcome this growing distrust. Who can blame the long-suffering public with all the bs that has been fed to them, being treated like mushrooms, living in the dark and being fed compost!
“The death of conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh this week spawned a predictable flurry of news coverage about him that touched on all the big chapters of his three-decade career. He was a fire-breathing right-wing provocateur, we were reminded; a bigot; a smash-mouth; a GOP standard-bearer; an avatar of traditional conservatism who morphed into a champion of Donald Trump’s burn-it-all-down brand of politics; a peddler of disinformation and half-truths; a horrible human being; a loving husband; he was all that, and more, the news coverage told us.
What much of the reportage failed to spend much time on, however, is the mistrust of traditional, mainstream media that helped grease the skids of Limbaugh’s career in the first place. Which is why it must be noted, even as the man who led a talk radio revolution is now gone — his death happens to coincide with a moment when fewer people than ever trust traditional media, according to the results of a new survey.
For the first time, Edelman’s annual trust barometer, which it shared with Axios, revealed that fewer than half of all Americans acknowledge any kind of trust in the mainstream media. Fifty-six percent of Americans, for example, said they agreed with the following statement: "Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations."
The results go on to show that 59% of Americans said they agree with this statement: That “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.” And 61% of Americans think that “The media is not doing well at being objective and non-partisan.”
“El Rushbo” built his entire career out of an understanding of that reality. It’s hard not to read those new statistics and flash back to some of the highlights of his career, like the time in 2013 where he blasted journalists as “dangerous to the republic.” And in response to one particular news article that set him off during a radio broadcast, he railed against journalists thus: “We might want to start considering, at least talking about registering journalists, just like we have to register guns. Background checks and all of that. Because this is mental illness. This is bordering on delusion, this piece. It really is incredible… We ought to register these journalists.”
The deeper you look at this issue, though, you start to see the same pattern on both sides of the political divide. Too many news consumers start out with a world view, and either acquire or dismiss facts depending on whether or not they snap together like missing puzzle pieces in a jigsaw of the mind. Liberals railed at The New York Times NYT +2.3%’ Washington correspondent Maggie Haberman for pretty much the entirety of the Trump presidency if she had a piece that dutifully reported some action he’d taken that didn’t find a way to also suggest that he was the devil incarnate.”
Comments