Americans' trust in media plummets to historic low: poll (2023)

And now that I think of it, that must be exactly the feeling that people have in oppressive regimes: Everyone knows that they're being lied to, but it's just accepted as a fact of life.

For instance a Fox News viewer might not trust “the media” but does trust Fox; meanwhile a MSNBC viewer thinks MSNBC is trustworthy and the Fox News viewer is being lied to.

I would guess the amount of time people spend consuming media over those decades has increased, and that people trust the media they choose to listen too.

Imagine someone says "the media in general is not trustworthy" and everyone nods in agreement. "But the media we listen too is good", again everyone nods in agreement. Then gradually, everyone realizes they all listen to different media. What do they do now? They mostly keep quiet and retreat into their own media bubble.

How many hours have you spend watching political content the last month? How many hours have you spent engaged in calm and respectful talk with someone who would challenge your beliefs? Do you even have someone you can disagree with in a calm and respectful way? Are you able to disagree in a calm and respectful way?

Not sure where I'm going here, just a train of thought. I've been thinking about how I can get more of my "news" from people who I can actually talk to (not necessarily in person). I'm tired of political commentary where, if I have a question, I can't do anything, the talking head keeps going, skipping over any counter points that might be raised. Why am I listening to people who wont listen to me? How can I find people to listen to who will also listen to me in return?

The doctrine was abolished in 1987.

The news became much more entertaining. Now you have lots of mud-slinging, bias, and name-calling, and a lot less reasoned debate and thought. Network news departments now make a lot of money.

In order to make more money, you need more advertisers. If you have high-paying advertisers, you can't offend them. That means that there are many topics, especially corporate-funded takeovers of regulatory agencies, which aren't covered at all. You never hear CNN or Fox News talk about the revolving door between the FDA and big pharma, or the USDA and big ag, or between the SEC and big banks, or between defense contractors and the CIA. Neither "left-wing" nor "right-wing" networks wants to talk about that, because it would decrease their profits.

Viewers can sense this. They're not made of stone. That's why they don't trust the media.

(I wrote "left-" and "right-" in quotes, because there aren't any left-wing networks at all, but that's another issue).

But if you go back in history, other than about a three-decade blip, the media has never been trustworthy. It's always been schlock designed to make money, entertain, and push positions and ideologies, since the beginning, all the way up to today. The baby boomers tried to make this statement about the media being a force for good, but it was ultimately a pipe dream, and people knew it even in the 70s. Yet they kept trying to sell us this bill of goods about the media's inherent virtue and necessity.

The end result is modern generations just expect the media to be something it's not, and couldn't ever be for long. So of course they're disillusioned. Ever since Nixon, Americans' falling trust in society and widening political and ideological gaps have led to a status quo of anomie, cynicism and apathy.

And I think that's great! You can't break an addiction until you hit rock bottom. Society has been so fucking obsessed with the media for so long that they can't imagine a world where someone isn't spoon-feeding them garbage. But the less people trust it, the closer they are to realizing that they might need to check up on the shit they're eating to see if there's poison in it. "Mama broadcaster and Papa newspaper would never deceive me - we vote for the same politicians!!"

My hope is that in 10 years, people will finally get off their fat, lazy, stupid asses, and do some due diligence. Get some critical thinking skills and learn to research. Look into local politics and find out what's happening around them. Maybe actually learn what the positions of political candidates are and what the actual implications of them are. (Ok that last one will never happen, but a boy can dream)

Related: ‘Too many people watched’ – UK MP explains why RT was banned - https://archive.is/urSI2

Sometimes knowing the truth is a matter of life or death even if the truth is not easily obtainable, but ignoring the truth is not logically defensible.

I find it funny that Democrats had a big surge of thinking highly of the news when it was on a 24/7 fuck trump loop for 6 years straight.

I have lost trust in all media.

I did a simple exercise on Google News, I blocked a media source if:

1. The title was clickbait 2. The reported story turned out later the be false 3. There was no actual “news” (i.e. something happened and verifiable facts about it were reported)

In 6 months I had blocked every news source provided.

Media is a gimmick for attention, with a veneer of a cause (whatever your cause of choice is).

What’s worse, there is a shared bias about the world within the writer class. Having known the truth of more than a few reported stories by reputable journalist, I was stunned how often what was written had no grounded whatsoever in what actually happened. It was simply an anthology of opinions by people with the credentials to give a viewpoint on a topic they had no personal insight into.

Now that I’ve eliminated media from my diet, I spend far more time investigating and learning.

Just like junk food takes the place of nutrition without providing it, media is narrative without instruction.

This wasn’t always the case. Look at newspaper articles from the 1920s. They are basically Wikipedia articles as told by a friend.

I’m shocked how many otherwise intelligent and well-educated people truly feel they “won’t know what’s going on in the world” without media. Fact check even two or three stories with experts from your personal network. You’ll learn quickly that media isn’t solving that problem and doesn’t deserve the job.

Before cable TV News was a loss leader mostly limited to time slots that were the least profitable for commercials and mostly covered headlines.

When 24/7 cable arrived with CNN and then Fox, the filled in time essentially became 23 hours of talking head opinion. Suddenly the critics isolated to talk radio got their own forums.

But what really finally destroyed trust was social media. Now instead of just your uncle telling you to watch Fox, he’s resharing all over FB, and now Post-Musk Twitter.

With the signal to noise ratio going to hell, and one side almost constantly spreading (according to a peer reviewed a Science journal paper recently) significantly more misinformation to their own bubble, is it any wonder trust is declining?

The final nail in the coffin will be AI where deepfakes and bots will make it almost impossible to believe any story.

I feel like the jig is up when it comes to the media, ‘citizen journalism’ via apps like Twitter, Instagram etc makes quick work of debunking or exposing biases in mainstream media.