Annual study shows BIG problems for media, and it’s bigger than Trump’s war on ‘fake news’

If you think there is something, or a lot, fishy going on with the corporate media, especially after this election cycle, you’re not alone.

Only 18 percent of Trump voters trust the media. And only a narrow majority (57 percent) of Biden voters trust the journalism profession, according to a study shared exclusively with Axios. “Trust in all media—traditional, social and search and owned media—is at record lows…Strikingly, traditional media has had the steepest annual decline we have witnessed of any media source in almost a decade of tracking.”

Overall, only 46 percent of Americans now have trust in traditional media. This data was among the findings of the 58-page Edelman Annual Trust Barometer compiled by Edelman Data & Intelligence, a global research consultancy. Additional  findings: Nearly 60 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that ‘Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations,” about the same percentage think that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.'”


According to Axios, “Mistrust of media is now a central part of many Americans’ personal identity — an article of faith that they weren’t argued into and can’t be argued out of.” Axios also noted that that the declining approval is echoed worldwide and “mostly not a function Donald Trump’s war on fake news.”

Although readers may or may not agree with or draw different conclusions from other aspects of this report that covers various issues and has an elitist tone to it, it’s no wonder that consumers are rejecting the echo chamber of what is generally referred to as fake news and selective, ideologically driven outrage.

For example, many of those in the press who make their living under the umbrella of free speech are now calling for censorship. They also believe that a rigged election is okay, depending upon who wins, but challenging the outcome on constitutional grounds is a threat to democracy. Mainstream media outlets insisted that the Hunter Biden laptop/influence peddling scandal was a conspiracy theory unworthy of reporting, but the Trump-Russia collusion hoax was legit. The list goes on.

Journalists far and wide also claimed that the summer-long riots across America were mostly peaceful protests, while the universally condemned riot at the U.S. Capitol perpetrated by a relatively small group of lawbreakers among thousands of mostly peaceful rally attendees was labeled an insurrection.

“We have an infodemic, and in short, we don’t trust the sources of information, meaning we don’t trust the media, it’s seen as politicized, biased, and we don’t trust the people who are speaking,” Edelman CEO Richard Edelman told CBS news.

Trump and Biden voters have common ground in the strong trust of the CEO of the company where they work. Survey respondents also want CEOs to speak out on social issues and intervene when the government doesn’t act. In theory, that may sound okay. Under pressure from left-wing activists, virtue-signaling corporate America has aligned with cancel culture, and the abrupt de-platforming of Parler as perhaps the latest and most prominent example.

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Robert Jonathan

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