Trust In the Media Is at Record Lows

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So numbers are out and this shouldn’t surprise really much of anybody, but the trust in media right now is at record lows. The issue is this has enormous consequences. The writing’s been on the wall with this for a long, long time. I remember a Saturday Night Live skit going back to the late 1990s. It was a takeoff on Schoolhouse Rock.

They had Conspiracy Rock or something like that. And they did this skit called Mediaopoly, where basically showing how all of the major media companies are owned by major corporations and how they can go about tinkering with stories. And I’ve covered this over the years in other ways, where big time advertisers can influence decisions that take place in the newsroom.

Again, going back to the big investment firms and the amount of money that they spend in advertising. And I couldn’t figure out why they were spending that money. They weren’t really selling anything in the ads. And basically, they were buying just great editorial content. Neither here nor there. But you take a look at these numbers. 29% of US adults have not very much trust in the media. A record high 39% have none at all. None at all.

That is the highest on record. Wow, again, you look at this and again, there’s a political gap as well. 58% of Democrats trust the media, only 11% feel the same. Consequences with this people. Last week on the program, I did a lengthy podcast talking about

this country and the state that we’re in and how divided we are. And the fact that other polls out there showing that it’s OK to resort to violence against people that you disagree with. And interestingly enough, Jonathan Turley, constitutional lawyer, he peers on media outlets a lot. He penned a piece.

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today and in many respects, echoing some of the things that I discussed last week and talking about the crisis of faith in this country and our constitution. And he’s saying that it is one of the greatest crisis that our nation has faced since its foundation. Recent poll he mentions, I talked about this last week, a majority of voters not only view the opposing party as a threat to the nation,

but justifying violence to combat their agenda. And again, do we not see this play out all the time on news media, yelling and screaming at one another, various different people that are going on, no sort of Socratic debate in the conversations that are had, constantly demonizing

people that you disagree with, like they are the enemy. It’s a problem, okay? 52% of Biden supporters say Republicans are now a threat to American life, while 47% of Trump supporters say the same about Democrats. What does that mean? Anyway, the threat to American life.

Well, again, I wish they would, you know, they said that they are what I want you to define that what is what is to you? What does American life mean? To me, it may you take a look at our Constitution and how it is supposed to protect against majority rule. We don’t have a democracy here. You’re supposed to protect people’s rights. The American life is the ability to go out there and succeed beyond your wildest dreams and fail.

and also live in a place where, guess what, you’re not gonna agree with everybody. There are gonna be opposing viewpoints. And again, if you’re not able to, if you’re not able to, I guess, understand the other side of an argument, or at least look into, you know, try to understand what other people are getting at, that’s a bit of a problem in of itself also.

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Again, I mentioned this 41% of Biden supporters now believe violence is justified to stop Republicans from achieving their goals. Almost an identical percentage 38% of Trump supporters not, not necessarily all Republicans but Trump supporters now embrace violence to stop Democrats.

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Nobody trusts the media right now. Faith is the one thing that no system of government can do without. Without faith in the underlying values of a constitutional system, authority rests on a mix of coercion and capitulation. And he’s talked about the growing loss of faith and how it’s fueled by these so-called intellectuals, elites that they parade. In particular, I’m…

I’m biased on this, I’m telling my bias, but MSNBC is a disaster. I mean, I got my complaints with the networks on both sides, but the type of whack jobs that they parade on there, and I can laugh at them, but there’s people here in this country that actually take them seriously. You got regular commentators and contributors on MSNBC that are calling, that call the Constitution trash. What’s that guy?

there, the guy with the crazy hair there, called the US Constitution trashed and argued that we should simply dump it. New York Times column, the Constitution is broken and should not be reclaimed. You got a law professor from Harvard and Yale that the Constitution needs to be radically altered to reclaim America from constitutionalism. It can go on and on and on. But again, it’s…

It’s again, how you get your notice quite frankly, the more radical you are, the better chance are you getting a professorship somewhere and getting yourself on MSNBC. Media is playing a big part of this.

It really is. It plays that the trust in the media people not believing what they’re told and again, they’ve, they’ve done it to themselves. They have, I mean I called for this years ago I wish that the major media companies would divest of their, their news networks and to make it standalone operations there and again but you know you’re starting to see some work done.

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on the outside where people are trying to do a much better job to me, it seems like an enormous opportunity, quite frankly, to actually try and deliver things as straight as you can. Quite frankly, it’s what we try here. I mean, I let everybody know that I have a certain belief system, you can listen to it here. However, we end up bashing both sides. And we try to get to some…

sort of truth and shouldn’t that be the ultimate game that you’re trying to get to some sort of truth of the matter? Not that it’s always possible and people are going to disagree on a myriad of things and how things can be done, but shouldn’t we be striving that? Shouldn’t we try to find some sort of commonality? What are you looking to achieve? Whatever issue it may be, whether it be immigration, whether it be poverty in America.

Okay, you believe that this is what we need to do. We believe this is what we need to do. Let’s discuss this and figure out if we can find some sort of common ground in order to achieve these goals that we both have. But no, it’s grab your torches and your pitchforks and destroy the people that you disagree with. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.