Posted on 08/21/2019 4:09:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
On her weekly Sinclair TV show, "Full Measure," on Aug. 18, former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson interviewed pollster Scott Rasmussen about journalists' standing in the public square. They're about as trusted as Wikipedia, the website considered so unreliable that school teachers often tell students they can't cite it as a source for their research papers.
Only 38 percent said national political coverage is accurate and reliable, while 42 percent said it is not. "We asked about national political reporters. Are they credible? Are they reliable?" said Rasmussen. "And you know, a little more than 1 out of 3 people say yes. When we ask about Wikipedia, we get the exact same answer. So what's -- what's happening is we have a world where people look at journalists like they look at Wikipedia."
You hear the media elites often break out the nostalgia for an era when the American people had "shared facts." Translation: a time when all Americans had the "mainstream" media to tell them what the "facts" were, and when those in that "mainstream" enjoyed a monopoly in their industry. Facts always seemed carefully arranged for political impact. For example, the TV anchors told us the Vietnam War was an unwinnable quagmire. Watergate was the worst scandal in American history. The Soviet Union only wanted peace. The wealthy were greedy. Planet Earth would succumb to global warming. And Planned Parenthood cares about children.
All this created a national hunger for alternative sources of information. The addition of Fox News, conservative talk radio, and conservative news websites and blogs in the '90s is decried as the dawn of a new era of "misinformation."
The media's dramatic tilt has clearly taken a toll on their image. Rasmussen told Attkisson that 78 percent of voters say reporters don't report news so much as they promote their agenda: "They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurate record of what happened. ... Only 14 percent think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened."
That result is just devastating. The "news" media no longer exist.
Then Rasmussen added a layer of public cynicism: "If a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36 percent of voters think that they would report that." The public sees the media for what they are: flagrant activists manipulating the democratic process.
Attkisson also interviewed former CNN anchor Frank Sesno to react to this massive credibility problem. Sesno toed the company line and, in so doing, tripped over his own tongue. "The public understands fundamentally what journalism should be," he said. "They don't understand how it's actually practiced." What does that mean? The public isn't well-informed enough to know how well-informed it would be if it were to trust the press?
If media organizations really wanted to improve their image, they would address public skepticism seriously, taking some very simple steps. Stop trying to bury every bit of good news for President Trump and every bit of bad news for Bernie, Biden & Co. Try to acknowledge that policy debates have two sides. It is fair to question climate change, support our national identity and oppose the abortion industry trafficking human carnage.
Is it too late? Conservatives have walked away from these networks and newspapers, which means that their audiences are now mostly liberals who reject everything conservatives champion. Obviously, from all we've witnessed, liberal journalists are much more sensitive to criticism from fellow liberals than they are to the American public. That's unlikely to change, so the credibility crisis will only deepen.
The bigger problem for anyone who pays attention is their advocacy of the Mueller investigation of the past few years, coupled with their bottomless pit if nonsensical impeachment talk.
The problem with the Mueller investigation and all that led up to it with the dossier, is that the media were an active component. Not passively reporting on it...an active participant in the attempted take down of a duly elected government.
And now they are caught between a rock and a hard place. There are media outlets that have reported on demonstrably false things as “facts”, but...they cannot take them down and retract them. And they won’t. They won’t because they are caught between taking a bath on it and admitting how wrong they were, and...simply not knowing what to do.
As for impeachment, doing a LexisNexis search would probably paint that story quite accurately. The curve for impeachment talk in the media would probably start out at election night at a given number quite higher than baseline, spike up to 5-10x that whenever Maxine Waters has a bowel movement or Trump talks about doing something good for America or simply makes fun of someone or trolls them, went up to 1000x that during parts of the Mueller investigation, and dropped back down. Impeachment talk still flares up, and viewing that subject discussion by the MSM as a whole by any impartial, partly educated person who knows anything about the Constitution, the conclusion that the MSM are leftist advocates and activists is unavoidable.
It appears their chosen path in the MSM is to wait it out and hope people just simply forget about it and move on to the next shiny object crisis, real or manufactured.
Sadly, I think they have valid reason to think that will work. It is a race between that, and the point where it blazes into the news against all their wishes due to indisputable evidence of criminality spilling out of an investigation. I am an optimist, so I think the latter will happen.
Many on Free Republic don’t. That’s fine. For the cynical or weak of heart, I will be glad to carry the banner to relieve them of the burden of worrying about it, and they win both ways. If nothing happens, they will be happy because they were right that nothing will happen. If something happens, they will be happy, because they are still Americans...:)
It is a win-win!
LOL, no kidding. And just as ugly as the characters in the Star Wars cantina, too...
Some people think Biden misspoke when he claimed “...We believe in Truth over Facts!” He didn’t.
Darth Vader: I am your father.
Luke: Get out of here, dad wasn’t black.
Darth Vader: This is a mask you dip!
Mad Magazine :)
They won’t fix it.
They don’t want to fix it.
They now view their role as agents of social change and ushers to a socialist new world order. Not reporting the news.
“...the only consequence is ...low ratings...”
The New York Times and the Washington Post are sponsored by deep pocket lefties (Bezos and I don’t know offhand who owns most of the Newe York Times - some billionaire Mexican?) who keep them afloat to further their own globalist/socialist goals - they do not care if their paper is making money or not.
No free market type correction (a bad product ultimately will fail) will ever happen.
“is that there is so little counter balance to their point of view.”
True.
What opposes NYT, WaPo and USA this day on a national level?
Detroit had opposing papers, Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. Both leftist now.
There’s Fox News (sort of) and OAN TV news against basically all others which lean left.
Now, social media is banning/censoring conservative speech.
What conservative TV news is shown at airport gates and medical waiting rooms?
There are many conservative AM radio talk shows, but...who listens to AM radio? Same for conservative podcasts and blogs — preaching to the choir.
I have Almost complete trust in Maybe 4 people.
And I have a family with 41 first cousins!!
“...next shiny object ... sadly, I think that will work...”
Great post. I think it will “work” also - many if not most Americans have the attention span of a toddler. Having grown up with social media and television/constant screens, they are now habituated to not think or read and then reflect and analyze for themselves.
“I don’t know in what order to put politicians, used car salesmen and msm anymore in terms of trust.”
Allow me to clarify the matter please. I am seventy five years old, a Navy veteran, have been to Europe, spent nearly a year living on Treasure Island in sight of Alcatraz while attending a Navy school, I have run a successful private corporation, I have bought several used vehicles. Trust me, if you have to pick one, go with the used car salesmen, they only lie to make money and they deal with customers who lie to them so it is fair play. The politicians and the MSM people don’t even have a concept of truth in the first place. They can tell you two opposing things at once and insist that both are
true but they don’t recognize real truth even if it bites them on the ass. Thank God we finally have a president who DID NOT get there as a politician.
That is an insult to wikipedia.
I actually believe wikipedia has a better chance of being right than most of the media.
Hey man it sounds like it’s been a very good life.
I am glad for you.
75 and going strong, I bet :)
I’m 51 and ready to pack it in!
And yeah they’re horrible, used car salesmen.
I am proud to have been one of very few people who has left with their used car and the contract filled out and signed.
And then decided I got screwed and went back to get 2 thousand off the price.
After going back and forth with manager, salesman and loan writer, I told them “listen guys do what you gotta do, but i’m leaving without the car. AND I’m mentally unstable and doing something tragic in a fit of despair because of a ruthless and unethical Dodge dealership would make bad headlines locally.”
That did the trick.
And no, I have no shame :)
Gotta work on that.
My cat too, and even the dog refuses to bring the paper in anymore!
Pimps and gangsta rappers are more trustworthy than the MSM.
Hahahaha...Mad Magazine, may they RIP!
(I used to like “Spy vs Spy” a long time ago...I guess that was an acquired taste, not much different from “Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner”...:)
LOL, at least they have principles. Bad ones, but...principles!
I think that is one of the unfortunate byproducts of a 24x7 news cycle.
Hey, I like having news available any time (how “primitive” we used to be, with the morning and evening newspapers, never mind the newspapers that used to publish up to five editions a day!) but I think since it is available any time, people can look at it for a minute and go on to something else.
I do think it breeds a degree of shallowness. We are “well informed” but “poorly thought through”
Welcome to the world of Fascist Silicon Valley!
Completely out of context. Sinclair’s head office sent that out to all stations, AND IT WAS ANNOUNCED ON AIR as a directive from head office.
The editorial was a direct response to the exposure of the MSM’s lock-step reportage. Sinclair wanted to assure its viewers that reporting from their stations would NOT be directed from the head office.
The MSM directed your attention away from themselves and to the ONE group that is truly trying to be objective, or at least less subjective, and many folks ate it all up like good little sheep.
Mulder was right: Trust No One.
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