I ran across a statistic the other day that didn't surprise me a great deal. It was a survey, which in itself can't really be trusted depending on who administered it, and it came to the conclusion that less than 30% of all Americans believe that "the news" can be trusted. I can't believe that number is that high and suspect that at least half of those 30% are actually hyper-partisan people that really WANT their news station of choice to be factual rather than actually believing that it is so.
The news in the USA is a joke and I think that most people understand that. Even my super conservative friends who get all their news from Fox and my super liberal friends who get all of their news from Occupy Democrats understand that they are being spoon-fed what their media outlet of choice wants them to think, rather than actually reporting and letting the viewers decide. I recall the old Fox mantra where they would say "we report! You decide!" Yeah guys, sure.
Just have a look at the above chart based on one study that is almost certainly tainted by bias in itself. Almost nothing is trusted and I have a question: Why is "Trump" listed as a media source? The fact that he is included at all indicates to me that a certain amount of Trump Derangement Syndrome is part of the equation here.
It is kind of good that The Economist is at the top of the list for trusted news sources and I actually genuinely agree with this sentiment. It's just too bad that almost no one read The Economist and their articles tend to be quite dry and also, not free. I don't know about you, but I am not going to pay for news online - it just seems such a silly thing to do.
The fact that BBC is considered "Trusted" has to have something to do with Americans not understanding that BBC is just as biased as their American counterparts. Just because someone has a British accent and it reporting from London doesn't mean that they are actually at all interested in getting the truth out there. They have an objective just like Fox and CNN do.
Something that was really funny in another poll that was conducted was that the most trusted major news network was The Weather Channel at at 52% trustworthy rating. If we are getting to the point where people start thinking that a channel that only talks about the forecast is fake news, than I think we have reached the point where Americans are finally starting to wake up a bit and realize that almost all media is a manipulation tactic, and not really interested in informing anyone of anything.
I'll go ahead and say that I'll trust the Weather Channel too but who knows what the incentive for lying about the weather could be. I suppose there if there is some gain to be had by lying about anything, corporations will find a way to do exactly that.
When looking at polls it is easy to see that politics has invaded all of what people do in their lives and this affects their "trust" in a very detectable way. For example, whenever you ask a person their political affiliation in a poll as well as who they trust, they almost always "trust" the people that lean the same way that they do politically. It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking sad.
I don't know about you but I tend to not trust anyone in the media at all, even if they are saying something that I would like to be true. It doesn't really even matter how irrelevant or unimportant the story is. If it isn't a puff piece about a squirrel that can waterski, I just assume I am being lied to.
