> 70% of Democrats, 14% of Republicans, 27% of independents trust media
Wow, that partisan divide.
Wow, that partisan divide.
A much better poll would be about trust in explicit news sources, which would lead to the obvious conclusion that everyone trusts the sources of news they subscribe to, those sources create a particular reality, and that sources that paint pictures of different realities aren't trust-able.
Rs don't trust Fox either. They called AZ for Biden early. Neil Cavuto clowned himself over Trump taking HCQ. Tucker Carlson helped bury the Hunter Biden laptop story. Nobody trusts Fox on either side.
A 2013 study showed that journalists had increasingly identified as independent rather than Democrat or Republican. Only 28% Democrat, lower than at any time in the previous 40 years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/05/06/ju...
https://larswillnat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/2013-america...
“Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business…the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products.”
-Noam Chomsky.
Oh, wait he's not a republican.
The media industry ironically has a huge image problem - at its roots is the fact that their incentives do not align with their readership - they've actually made that readership a product to be sold to the highest bidder.
And yet the independents see this much closer to how the Republicans see it. I find that somewhat surprising.
Could be telling us that the most of the (non-Fox) media leans left, and the independents see it but the Democrats don't.
Well, yeah. That big jump when Trump got elected isn't because the media suddenly became much more trustworthy and only the Democrats figured it out.
I don't know why this should be assumed. Is there any evidence that independents are more informed than other groups?
A lot of political independents pay very little if any attention to politics, except perhaps right before an election.
What do you mean by biased?
You can probably say that on average, independents are less biased than Democrats in favor of Democrats and against Republicans, and correspondingly less biased than Republicans in favor of Republicans and against Democrats, although this may not apply to some individual independents.
However, I don't view politics as a line. The terms "left" and "right" were based on seating charts in a legislature. The realm of politics and political views is vastly broader than encompassed by relatively narrow range of the American Democratic and Republican parties, and moreover, there are vehement, nasty disputes even within those parties. So in the broader sense, I would say that every individual person has there own idiosyncratic views, which may or may not overlap well with some political party, and the whole notion of being "unbiased" is somewhat questionable.
Let me put it another way: if scientists say the Earth is over 4 billion years old, and creationists say the Earth is less than 10 thousand years old, should we expect the truth to the somewhere in the middle? Should we ask the agnostics?
More to the point, though, I don't know that it matters. I wouldn't expect them to have a particular useful view on the matter or take them as an authority because they're supposedly "unbiased".
I am a registered member of the Democratic Party.
That said, I am not a fan of either the US Democratic or Republican parties. I find both parties less interested in governing and more interested in maintaining/increasing their power.
But still, I'm a registered Democrat. Why is that? Where I live (NYC), the electorate is ~5:1 D/R. As such, a win in local (city council, Comptroller, etc.) and state (assembly, senate, etc.) Democratic primaries generally assures victory in the general election.
As such, I made the choice a bunch of years ago to change my party registration to the Democratic party.
Does that mean I see issues through "blue-tinted glasses"? I think not.
I'd also point out that I tend to be much more libertarian (small 'l') WRT social issues (equality of opportunity, stay the hell out of peoples' bedrooms and doctors' offices, personal freedom of expression, privacy, etc.), but also a strong advocate of living wages and a very strong government supported safety net.
I have some ideas about why all that is for the good, and have even discussed (especially free expression and a strong safety net) here on HN.
As should be obvious, neither party really supports positive change in most of the issues I find important. One more so than the other, but still woefully inadequate.
Regardless, I choose who I vote for based on my perception/understanding of the candidates' themselves, not which party's line on which these folks are running.
Perhaps I'm an outlier, and folks just vote whatever their family/peer group votes.
I'd say that I'd tend toward a strong belief in the idea that a "well educated electorate is essential to democratic self-rule." (usually, and incorrectly, attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but it's not who said it that matters, but that it's true).
We're falling down on that point (lots of others too, but who's counting?) and need to make sure that by the time an American citizen reaches the age of 18, they understand the US system of government in a reasonable amount of detail, both from conceptual and practical standpoints. You'd think that would be a no-brainer, but apparently (and unfortunately) not.
And that applies to many members of both the major, center right (Democratic) and further right (Republican) parties in the US.
It's a sad state of affairs, but one that's easily fixable, at least for future generations. I'm not holding my breath.