Depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall on, your trust in the media may be climbing to an acceptable level or at an abysmal low. A new poll shows that those approving of Trump’s work in the White House are more apt to believe the media is somewhere between Hitler and the Devil. Those of you who pine for the days when regulations were around every corner, then the media is just sort of okay.
As first reported by Buzzfeed, a YouGov poll showed that for anti-Trump folks, their confidence in the media has increased by leaps and bounds, but still isn’t at a point where people trust it completely:
The survey found that 74% of respondents who identify as Democrats, or who lean Democratic, have “a great deal” (19%) or “a fair amount” (55%) of confidence in the media. A poll taken in September 2016 asked the same question and found that 51% of Democrats expressed the same level of support, meaning that their confidence has increased 23 percentage points in just one year.
“Democrats still do not love the press — only 19 percent express ‘a great deal’ of trust and confidence — but they are far more positive than in the past,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College and coauthor of the study. “We interpret this increase as reflecting a recognition of the role of the media in holding an opposition president accountable, especially when his party controls both chambers of Congress.”
So a lot of this increased support for the media, specifically from the left, is the result of anti-Trump reporting hitting all the right spots during people’s confirmation bias massage.
However, this naturally rubs those on the right the wrong way. Trump once tweeted that the media was the “enemy of the American people,” and the majority of the right — and even some Democrats — tend to agree.
More than 60% of respondents who identified as approving of Trump agreed with the president’s statement that the media is an “enemy of the American people.” Among Trump disapprovers, roughly 15% agreed with the statement. When asked if they agree with the statement that the media “keep political leaders from doing their job,” the percentages were roughly the same.
As with any fight, people are sticking to their respective corners. HuffPo will obviously be a more attractive read for leftists, while the right is far more likely to tune into Fox News. However, despite the left’s 20+ point increase in its love of the media, its relationship with it seems to fall into the category of “the enemy of my enemy is my “friend.”
It gets worse for the media. Just last year, millennials were found to distrust the media far more than older generations were. With more and more millennials reaching voting age, and older generations literally dying off, the media’s fortunes look like they won’t improve much in the future.
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