Posted on 09/30/2015 6:15:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza is one of those self-impressed Watergate babies who thinks everything the media report brings great value to society. His latest article was titled "Trust in the media is at an all-time low. That's a terrible thing for all of us."
It is?
Automobile manufacturers can claim we need a car to get anywhere. The farmers and food companies will impress on the world its need to eat. But for the news media -- especially this news media -- to suggest civilization as we know it will cease to exist without their profound wisdom and professionalism is arrogant. And laughable. And apparently a lot of people agree with us.
The latest Gallup Poll finds that only 7 percent of Americans declare they have a "great deal" of trust in the media. At this rate, soon it will be just the media and their immediate families who check that box.
The percentage of those who say they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media is low not just among Republicans (32 percent), but among Democrats (now just 55 percent). It's low not just among people 50-plus (45 percent), but even lower in the 18 to 49 age bracket (36 percent).
The percentage that said their trust in the media was "none" matched an all-time high of 24 percent. One quarter of the population has no trust in the press. Nada. Nothing. Zero. Zip.
Cillizza tries to imagine the majority's message to the media: "You deserve what you get! Your years of lies and agenda-pushing have finally caught up to you. WE ARE ON TO YOU. To which I say: Wrong." (Emphasis his.)
Like hundreds of these snooty elites, he cries foul at media-bias chatter: "If you were in the media, you would know we aren't even close to organized enough to orchestrate such a grand plan."
How quaint how he twists the argument. To believe there is a bias is to be a nut that believes in some sort of conspiracy-hatching grand plans.
These denials have been issued for decades, and yet the trust numbers continue to crumble.
Clearly, Cillizza's spiel is not selling.
He blames everyone else. "I believe really strongly that the decline in trust in the media is primarily attributable to partisans -- whether in politics or in the media -- who have a vested interest in casting the press as hopelessly biased."
Listen for the implicit Fox News-bashing: "The rise of outside partisan groups -- on the left and the right -- has coincided with a bumper crop of partisan-first media outlets designed to foment rage and exasperation with the mainstream media's alleged missteps. It's good business for them -- and just plain terrible for the American public."
Cillizza is a regular guest on MSNBC, so maybe he should stay vague about how "partisan-first media" is ruining America.
He concludes by claiming critics of the "mainstream" media want them to disappear: "Whether you like or agree with an independent media all the time -- breaking news: you won't! -- you should value an entity that does its best to hold those in power accountable."
Cillizza's refusal to consider that they don't convincingly "do their best" to hold our government accountable suggests the first problem with the media's public relations. You can't fix your image if you can't admit there's a serious problem, not just "alleged missteps." You can't simply point the finger at talk radio or Fox News or bloggers and think that's the end of the discussion.
Perhaps Cillizza and his media friends could start with more humility. With their business models collapsing, in print and on the air, it might be time to try and connect with the disaffected majority, not just spit on them as rage-spewing partisans ruining the country.
Or just stay on MSNBC, where journalism goes to die.
We can trust the media.
Trust them to always support and promote the Big-Gov, leftist, one-world agenda.
color me shocked....who knew???
We get our information from foreign papers. At least, the UK papers own their biases, and the reader can accept or reject their viewpoints. American papers stink with Left-wing bias, but they insist they are not. How can one trust liars like that?
“...not just spit on them as rage-spewing partisans...”
Brilliant, intellectual, really-really smart, superior, Progressive geniuses will always spit on people who disagree with them.
It’s in their DNA and it comes with their self-appointed status as arbiters of all human activity.
(In other words, they’re arrogant scu*bags.)
IMHO
I guess he's never heard one of Rush's media montages.
Since this figure appeared in the media, the number is no doubt a lot higher than reported.
I’m not sure it’s as much a “planned” thing, as it is monkey-, monkey-do. The age-old thing about getting the “scoop”, held over from the days when newspapers were king of the media.
Anchors can’t seem to see through their “celebrity status” (sel imposed) long enough to know what their real job is supposed to be. From the O’Reilly, God-complex type, to the Me-GYN “I’m so pretty” type...they think their delivery of the news is more important than the news itself.
Then there’s the entertainment factor tied in with endless streams of “expert” panelists, all spewing opinion instead of hard news. Take away their writers, and teleprompters, and they’re as dumb as Obama.
An oldie but goodie on attitudes toward the media:
Old me: Honorable people doing the best they can to keep the public informed. Unjustly accused by right-wingers of bias.
New me: Basically self-congratulatory narcissists looking to promote (a) number one and (b) the sort of society where people like themselves can flourish. So biased they truly don’t even know it.
Excerpt From: Stein, Harry. How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace). StoneThread Publishing. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.
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“Media Trust Hits All-Time Low”.........
Meaning we still have more room to go. How low can we go with our expectations?
Hussen’s lackeys, holding hm and his administration accountable? That’s a good one. Not only haven’t they asked him hard questions, they cover his azz every time he gets off teleprompter and lets his intrinsic vapidity show (”uh no, Mr President, you meant to say that you’re a Christian, not a Muslim. Let me correct the term you used for your own deeply-held beliefs, or at least the one you privately claim, as the best tool for undermining America”).
Or journo-list.
The media continue to lie even when they are dead, and they continue to vote DemoRat Socialist.
At least some of it is orchestrated, ie journo-list.
{That’s a terrible thing for all of us.”}
Then fix it. Stop being an arm of the DNC.
When has the media done ANYTHING to hold Obama accountable for anything?
-PJ
I believe so too.
Never forget Journolist and Ezra Klein.
The news is no different. Its just that these people leave, and in most cases entered, journalism school flaming progressives, so thats the context for everything that follows.
Remember these people aren't reporters. They don't originate the news. They simply read what news someone else has gathered.
Many years ago I worked at a radio station. The news came to us (I can't recall whether it was AP or UP) on a teletype machine, that printed it out on a big roll of yellow paper. When it was news time, the announcer tore off a chunk of teletype output, took it into the studio, and read it over the air. These people on TV are doing nothing more than the announcers at my old station did.
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