Digby at Hullabaloo in About those honest and trustworthy numbers notes the American public’s declining trust in mass media, with Gallup figures at their lowest ever at only 32% trusting mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly”.

You’d think [the press would] be just a tad less sanctimonious with the endless scolding over politicians failing to be “honest and trustworthy.” It’s not like the American people think they’re any better. Maybe they should take a little deeper look into the underlying lack of trust in all institutions instead of attributing the numbers to alleged character flaws of individuals.

Gallup’s historical trends graphs for trust in government and trust in institutions also show substantial declines in confidence generally over the last few decades: only the military, small business and the police currently poll higher than 50% in the combined Great Deal/Quite A Lot [of confidence] column, and of those only the military is currently polling significantly higher than it did in the 1970s.

It is sadly easy to see why self-identified outsiders with a knack for extremist rhetoric have such popular appeal when the public has such mistrust of the establishment, and yet most institutions (and not just in the USA) seem determined to double down on becoming more and more opaque rather than embracing transparency and accountability, and then wonder why their rhetoric doesn’t cut through.

Categories: culture wars, ethics & philosophy, media, parties and factions

Tags: churnalism, elections, pseudobalance