PPP's new TV news trustworthiness poll is out

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Charles Kozierok

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May 14, 2012
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And their headline is: Fox News’ Credibility Declines. (I'll resist the obvious jokes about negative numbers here.)

Just like its actual ratings, Fox News has hit a record low in the four years that we've been doing this poll. 41% of voters trust it to 46% who do not. To put those numbers into some perspective the first time we did this poll, in 2010, 49% of voters trusted it to 37% who did not.
Here's how moderates rated the sources (approve/disapprove):

CNN: 43/29
ABC: 39/29
CBS: 39/30
Comedy Central: 31/32
MSNBC: 40/32
NBC: 44/27
PBS: 66/16
Fox "News": 29/59
Basically, it's conservatives versus everyone else, just like on the last few iterations of the poll. They love Fox and hate everything else, and everyone else thinks Fox is the most unreliable of any of the networks, even if they aren't thrilled with most of the alternatives.

The right is in its own little bubble.

ETA: Least trusted news source among moderates? 52% for Fox, 37% for all of the others combined.
 
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Jan 25, 2011
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Now is this the survey that rates the ignorance of each channel's viewers as it related to news stories?

I prefer that over the who do you trust surveys.
 

Craig234

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May 1, 2006
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Now is this the survey that rates the ignorance of each channel's viewers as it related to news stories?

I prefer that over the who do you trust surveys.

The 'trustability' rating is a bit meaningless, since when the public is greatly misled, wrong, the poll will just show their wrong opinion.

When people agree with the results, they excitedly point them out - but what if 90% of the public trusted a very dishonest Fox News? How meaningful would that poll be?

Instead it would be cited by people to 'prove' how Fox News was trustable.

By the time a poll like this gets a 'correct' result, it shows the public is less fooled.
 

Charles Kozierok

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May 14, 2012
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It's possible for people to trust a source that isn't really trustworthy. As I said in the related thread in P&N, I don't consider MSNBC to be anything more than a propaganda outlet, and for 40% of people to consider them trustworthy is IMO a problem in and of itself.

That said, this data is meaningful because it helps establish what the mainstream really is. People on the right declare that "all the media are left-wing biased" (except for Fox, of course); people on the left say the opposite. They each respond to each other by saying "you only feel the other guys are biased because you're biased yourself".

And that's true -- to a certain extent. Which is why being able to check what self-declared moderates think of various sources is a useful checkpoint. When over half of them pick one source out of eight as most untrustworthy, that's a pretty good indication of which side is being more affected by media bias.
 

fskimospy

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Mar 10, 2006
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Not to mention that this dovetails with other research that finds conservatives to be consistently misinformed on highly partisan issues. On nonpartisan issues they do just fine, but on contentious ones it gets bad. Further evidence of a bubble.
 

Bowfinger

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Nov 17, 2002
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It's possible for people to trust a source that isn't really trustworthy. As I said in the related thread in P&N, I don't consider MSNBC to be anything more than a propaganda outlet, and for 40% of people to consider them trustworthy is IMO a problem in and of itself. ...
I think this depends on your definition of "trustworthy" (or more to the point, on how the poll's participants defined trustworthy). In one assumes trustworthy to mean unbiased, I agree the poll's results raise concern. What if people interpreted "trustworthy" to mean accurate, however? MSNBC coverage may be biased, but is it accurate?

My disdain for Fox is not so much their overt bias but the fact that they are regularly and sometimes brazenly dishonest. In my book, that makes them not trustworthy. Does MSNBC have the same issue with dishonesty? I truly don't know because I don't watch it. (I've never needed someone else to tell me what to think.)

Just a thought.
 

randomrogue

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Jan 15, 2011
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Is there an organization that monitors the truthfulness and level of propoghanda in American media (or all media for that matter)? What 800 people think doesn't concern me so much. I'd much rather have a fact checking organization call out the bad media.
 

Craig234

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Is there an organization that monitors the truthfulness and level of propoghanda in American media (or all media for that matter)? What 800 people think doesn't concern me so much. I'd much rather have a fact checking organization call out the bad media.

Yes. Unsurprisingly, right-wing groups have set up to counter those who criticize right-wing media more, sort of like that 'adjust poll' info to claim other polls were biased.

So it has kind of broken down - there's a group who criticizes a lot of the media but finds more wrongs by the right, and there's a group that is pretty dedicated to attacking anything it calls liberal that I think is usually pretty specious, and one of the best is mediamatters.org, but it is dedicated to documenting flaws in the right-wing media; it just tries to do it accurately.

And then there are the so-called fact checking organizations, some better some worse - I think Politico has become a bit of a joke for some of its 'fact checking'.

So you not only have media that caters to different political factions, you have media watchdogs and fact checkers who cater to them. You pick.
 

Craig234

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For just a random sample of mediamatters.org, their current top story is about conservative columnist George Will misrepresenting the history of Watergate, by writing a column that painted Robert Bork - the radical, terrible judge who is a martyr for the right that Democrats thankfully saved the country from, which they did not do from the terrible Scalia - as a 'hero' who 'protected' the prosecution of Watergate.

Now, actual history is that when Nixon didn't like getting investigated, he ordered his Attorney General to fire the Watergate psecial presecutor Archibald Cox. He refused and resigned. Nixon ordered his deputy to do so. He refused and resigned. Third in line ijn Justice was Bork, who followed the order and fired Cox and became acting Attorney General, to Bork's dishonor (but setting him up to be thanked later with the Supreme Court appointment by Reagan).

Will claims Bork then 'protected' the prosecution of Watergate; Mediamatters documents he actually ordered the prosecution dismantled three days after firing Cox.

I'd say read it as a sample, and reach your own opinion about it as a good watchdog.

Check the main page for several other sample stories.

http://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2013/03/12/will-wash-post-hold-george-will-accountable-for/193016
 
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