Editor's note: given that it's Sunday morning and I don't have a lot of new content to share today, I thought I'd continue my ongoing content migration project to escape Facebook's absurd anarchist and antifascist bans. Today's article analysis was originally published on September 24th, 2019 and concerns the (understandable) lack of trust many Americans have in the media.
In today's article analysis we're going to take a brief look at a April, 2018 Monmouth University poll covered by Politico Magazine - so please keep in mind that this article is over a year old. On the one hand you could argue that it makes the result irrelevant, but I'd probably counter by pointing out that the same poll taken the year before (and during the height of Trump's ongoing war with the mainstream American media) still returned a result of 63 percent of respondents who "registered concerns about the spread of misinformation."
This particular poll is bizarrely enough a hyper-specific variation on the classic "trust in media" polls that are typically conducted in the lead up to the election. In particular Monmouth asked if respondents believed that "major traditional television and newspaper media outlets report “fake news.”
This is important because the term "fake news" is of course politically hyper-charged in American politics and traditionally associated with Trump and his fanatical base of support. In the past I have noted the similarities between "fake news" and the term "Lügenpresse" - the blatantly fascist overtones in Trump's chosen terminology are (at least to me) self-evident and thus I have avoided using the term myself in my writing. In other words, I would hypothesize that as alarming as learning that three quarters of the population believes mainstream media purposely publishes "fake news" the fact is that number is probably depressed by the question's vague association with Trump and American fascism.
Truthfully however what really matters here is the clear and overwhelming signs that a significant if not overwhelming majority of people do not trust mainstream corporate media in the United States.
Shockingly enough, even this poll represents a marked improvement on the 2016 Gallup poll that indicated a mere six percent (yes, single digits six) of Americans had complete trust in their media.This result has truthfully been a very long time in coming and while it's utterly repugnant that a fascist like Donald Trump was able to seize power by riding on the back of this mass distrust in media - it doesn't mean he's wrong when he says nobody trusts them.
In light of this information, I strongly advise readers to release a deep calming breath and relax. The next time you're reading today's fiftieth article about why Liz Warren already has the nomination in the bag, or some blithering idiot stenographer's op-ed about why Bernie Sanders is a whackjob conspiracy theorist for reading Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" - just remind yourself that you're not going crazy and nobody else believes this bullsh*t either.
- nina illingworth
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