WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) — Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest point in the election year, a latest Gallup poll has found.
Now only 32 percent of Americans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, down eight percentage points from last year, according to the Sept. 7-11 poll.
Gallup started taking the media survey in 1972, and has been doing it on a yearly basis since 1997.
Americans’ trust in the media, which hit the highest point in 1976 at 72 percent and stayed in the low to mid-50s through the late 1990s and into the early years of the new century, has fallen steadily. It has consistently been below a majority level since 2007, Gallup found.
While Americans’ trust in the media has been eroding over the years, the 2016 election campaign may be the reason that it has fallen so sharply this year, it noted.
Republicans have fueled the decline in Americans’ trust in the media, as their trust has plummeted to 14 percent from 32 percent a year ago. This is the lowest confidence in the media among Republicans in 20 years.
This is largely affected by the criticism of the media by many Republican leaders and conservative pundits, who said Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has received overly positive media attention, while Republican candidate Donald Trump has received unfair or negative attention.
Democrats’ and independents’ trust in the media has declined only marginally, with 51 percent of Democrats (compared with 55 percent last year) and 30 percent of independents (versus 33 percent last year) expressing trust.
With the explosion of the mass media in recent years, especially the prevalence of the social media, perhaps Americans decry lower standards for journalism, Gallup said.
But, as blogs and social media “mature,” they may improve in the American public’s eyes and could in turn elevate Americans’ trust in the mass media as a whole, it added.
