Republican confidence in news media plummets to lowest level in 20 years

By Jennifer Harper - The Washington Times - Wednesday, September 14, 2016

NEWS AND OPINION:

Blame it on biased election coverage. A stark new Gallup poll reports that Americans’ trust and confidence in news media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level in the pollster’s history, with less than one-third saying they have a reasonable amount of trust in the press. We’re talking a span of 44 years here; the pollster first asked the nation to weigh in on news organizations in 1972.

“Over the history of the entire trend, Americans’ trust and confidence hit its highest point in 1976, at 72 percent, in the wake of widely lauded examples of investigative journalism regarding Vietnam and the Watergate scandal,” writes analyst Art Swift.

The sentiment has steadily gotten worse, consistently ebbing below a majority level since 2007. National trust in the press has dropped a full eight percentage points in the last year alone. One group in particular is mighty vexed: “Republicans who say they have trust in the media has plummeted to 14 percent from 32 percent a year ago. This is easily the lowest confidence among Republicans in 20 years,” Mr. Swift noted.

Among Democrats, the number is now 51 percent, down a mere four percentage points. Among independents, it is 30 percent, down just three points.

“The election campaign may be the reason that it has fallen so sharply this year,” Mr. Swift said. “With many Republican leaders and conservative pundits saying Hillary Clinton has received overly positive media attention, while Donald Trump has been receiving unfair or negative attention, this may be the prime reason their relatively low trust in the media has evaporated even more. It is also possible that Republicans think less of the media as a result of Trump’s sharp criticisms of the press.”

Will the trend end? Maybe.

“With the explosion of the mass media in recent years, especially the prevalence of blogs, vlogs and social media, perhaps Americans decry lower standards for journalism,” Mr. Swift observes. “When opinion-driven writing becomes something like the norm, Americans may be wary of placing trust on the work of media institutions that have less rigorous reporting criteria than in the past. On the other hand, as blogs and social media ’mature,’ they may improve in the American public’s eyes. This could, in turn, elevate Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media as a whole.”

FOR THE LEXICON

“Amplification”

— A strategy employed by women working in the White House to ensure they get noticed during important conversations with President Obama and other key personnel. The word noted by Washington Post White House bureau chief Juliet Eilperin.

“Female staffers adopted a meeting strategy they called ’amplification’: When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution — and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own,” writes Ms. Eilperin.

And amplification, apparently, is “what it takes to get heard in the ’boys’ club’ that is the Obama White House,” observes Glenn Reynolds, the astute “Instapundit” for PJ Media.

FROM THE FIELD

“Deplorable lives matter”

— Handmade sign held by a voter supporting Donald Trump, at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina, on Tuesday.

FROM THE CAMPUS

“Free speech has yet again been stifled on one of America’s college campuses,” reports Young Americans for Liberty, a feisty conservative and libertarian student organization which has 750 chapters nationwide. A representative for the group recently handed out leaflets at Fairmont State University in West Virginia, only to be told by campus security police to cease, as his actions were deemed “too outgoing.”

Oh dear. Got to watch that.

“Universities should be a place for open dialogue and we will continue this battle to ensure that our First Amendment rights remain protected — not just on college campuses, but everywhere in America,” observes Cliff Maloney, Jr., executive director of the liberty-minded student group

LEST WE FORGET

Constitution Day is Saturday. “Drafted in secret by delegates to the Constitutional Convention during the summer of 1787, this four-page document, signed on September 17, 1787, established the government of the United States,” explains the U.S. Archives in a neat and efficient little statement. Find their overview - which includes a downloadable image of the original document - here

Celebrations of this document are many in the next few days, including a gathering Thursday at a swank hotel in the nation’s capital organized by at Hillsdale College which includes a discussion of “Trump and Conservatism” by such learned folks as National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg, Hillsdale president Larry Arnn and John Marini of the Claremont Institute.

STILL RILED AT BLITZER

CNN continues to enrage Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, who recalls the network’s recent treatment of Gov. Mike Pence. The vice presidential nominee was taken to task earlier this week by CNN host Wolf Blitzer for not categorizing David Duke as “deplorable.”

Mr. Pence countered that he was “not in the name-calling business” and that he was not sure “why the media keeps dropping David Duke’s name.” He also pointed out that his running mate Donald Trump had already denounced the white nationalist and rejected his support in the presidential race. Mr. Blitzer

Mr. Bozell deems the on-camera encounter “textbook gotcha journalism” and downright absurd.

“This is just another left-wing smear designed to help Hillary because they know she is in trouble and CNN is all too willing to do Clinton’s dirty work. Media trust and credibility continue to plummet in public polling because there is nothing the press won’t do to slander conservatives. It’s despicable and repulsive,” says Mr. Bozell.

POLL DU JOUR

• 75 percent of Americans say the current U.S. tax code if either “complex” or “extremely complex.”

• 20 percent rate the tax code “OK” while 5 percent say it is “simple.”

• 59 percent say “tax fairness” is the most important consideration in national tax policy.

• 23 percent say “whatever is best for the economy” is the most important consideration.

• 17 percent say “tax equality” among tax payers is the most important.

Source: A WalletHub survey of 1,040 U.S. adults conducted August 26 to 29 and released Wednesday.

• Cranky outbursts, petty annoyances to jharper@washingtontimes.com.

• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.