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Trump administration seen as more truthful than news media

P

PokerGuy

Lifer
http://www.thehill.com/homenews/media/318514-trump-admin-seen-as-more-truthful-than-news-media-poll

The Trump administration is more trusted than the news media among voters, according to a new Emerson College poll.

The administration is considered truthful by 49 percent of registered voters and untruthful by 48 percent.

But the news media is less trusted than the administration, with 53 percent calling it untruthful and just 39 percent finding it honest.
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Kind of funny. How far has media credibility fallen? Well, apparently now it's even lower than Trump's credibility, which is saying something. With formerly respectable (if biased) organizations like CNN going all-out fake news / tabloid, I guess this is not surprising.
 
All-out fake news like "Lady Gaga to perform Satanic ritual"? No, I don't think so.
Nuance is kind of important.
The numbers split along party lines, with nearly 9 in 10 Republicans saying the Trump administration is truthful, compared with more than 3 in 4 Democrats who say the opposite.

The Emerson poll found that 69 percent of Democrats think the news media is truthful while 91 percent of Republicans consider the Fourth Estate untruthful.
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Ok so is this a poll we're Ok to believe? I keep forgetting which ones are Ok and which ones are fake.
Just to point out that untruthful new media is reporting this, so I'm sorta confused if I'm to believe it or not?
 
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how many times do I have to repeat it before it becomes fact?
 
CALLER ID

The national Emerson College poll was conducted February 5-6 under the Supervision of Professor Spencer Kimball. The sample consisted of only registered voters, n=617, with a margin of error (MOE) of +/- 3.9 percentage points. The national data was weighted by 2016 election results, gender, party affiliation, race, age and region. It is important to remember that subsets based on gender, age, party breakdown and school carry with them higher margins of error, as the sample size is reduced. Data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines only.
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so +/- 3.9%. That's actually pretty large.
 
brycejones said:
Rush and friends are proud. The founding fathers however weep.
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Yeah, because I'm sure they would promote slavish devotion and belief in the media no matter how biased and no matter how often they are caught lying and pushing one political perspective /s
 
+/- 3.9% and to landlines only. So that margin is actually probably much larger than stated. Much much larger.
 
Look at the poll internals. 90% of republicans think the media is untruthful, but 30% of democrats also think so. However, their reasons are opposite. Almost all Republicans think the news media has a liberal bias. Some percentage of liberals (but not most) think the media has a conservative bias. Ask those liberals who think the media has a conservative bias who they believe when the media and the Trump administration disagree. The answer shouldn't be any surprise. Frame the question differently - like who would you trust between the two - and the result will be different because the liberals who said they don't trust the media will still choose it over Trump.

News media contains all sorts of information which people in general, but far right and far left ideologues in particular, find inconvenient. As the nation continues to polarize, and the extremes grow while the center shrinks, people will distrust the media to an increasing degree. This, however, has more to do with what is going on in our culture than it does with the media itself. The media isn't really any different than it was 30 years ago when people trusted it a lot more. What's different is us, not them.
 
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PokerGuy said:
Yeah, because I'm sure they would promote slavish devotion and belief in the media no matter how biased and no matter how often they are caught lying and pushing one political perspective /s
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It would be funny if you didn't actually believe what you just wrote.
 
Lets set aside all the debate on polls over the past couple of months and focus on this one...

From the press release
A key finding of the poll shows that voters find the Trump administration to be more truthful than the news media. The Trump administration is considered truthful by 49% of voters, to 48% of voters who consider it untruthful. Meanwhile, the news media is considered untruthful by a 53%-majority of voters, to only 39% who find them truthful (a 14-point gap). Numerous members of the Trump administration – including Trump himself – have been criticized frequently for making false statements. The partisan split on this topic is clear – 89% of Republicans find the Trump administration truthful, versus 77% of Democrats who find the administration untruthful. Conversely, 69% of Democrats find the news media truthful, while a whopping 91% of Republicans consider them untruthful.
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woolfe9998 said:
The media isn't really any different than it was 30 years ago when people trusted the media a lot more. What's different is us, not them.
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I don't believe that's true. I think the media has changed fundamentally. The internet has come along and given everyone a nice little echo chamber to help polarize views. At the same time, fox news came along and showed that you can get waaaaaay better ratings by appealing directly to political perspective rather than just "reporting the news". Most of the media always had a lefty bias to some extent, but now many have just gone all out without even the pretense of being unbiased. As things get more polarized, a lot of the media has decided to choose sides rather than report the news.
 
I have serious issues with the methodology. All polls are by necessity samples, but calling 617 people on landlines? That's not only a far too small selection, it basically rules out half of American households. It's like asking white rural Texans what they think of Trump and declaring that to be the American view; you know that the people you're not polling will dramatically alter the outcome, and no amount of adjustment will make up for that.

And in my experience? The media is mostly trustworthy. You will definitely see outlets that wear their opinions on their sleeve, sometimes to their detriment (Fox News on the right, MSNBC on the left), but most are interested in getting at least the core facts right. The one absolute truth is that the Trump administration is far less trustworthy -- it's so bad that you can basically assume its spokespeople are lying whenever they speak.
 
PokerGuy said:
How do you know that wasn't adjusted for?
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2 things. First, this:
CALLER ID

The national Emerson College poll was conducted February 5-6 under the Supervision of Professor Spencer Kimball. The sample consisted of only registered voters, n=617, with a margin of error (MOE) of +/- 3.9 percentage points. The national data was weighted by 2016 election results, gender, party affiliation, race, age and region. It is important to remember that subsets based on gender, age, party breakdown and school carry with them higher margins of error, as the sample size is reduced. Data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines only.
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There is a weighting associated with age, but that does not necessarily correct the issue, especially in a sample of only 617.

Second, you can't make up data for cases that didn't respond, even with weighting. Weighting a small sample like this is a terrible idea as well.

I have a Masters degree in Political Science, specializing in Public Opinion & Polling. This poll is not complete garbage, but it is absolutely not proof of anything.
 
Commodus said:
I have serious issues with the methodology. All polls are by necessity samples, but calling 617 people on landlines? That's not only a far too small selection, it basically rules out half of American households. It's like asking white rural Texans what they think of Trump and declaring that to be the American view; you know that the people you're not polling will dramatically alter the outcome, and no amount of adjustment will make up for that.
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So what you're saying is that Emerson college is stupid and has no idea how to do a poll, and they have no idea how to make adjustments to the data for such things. Not that I'm saying the poll is accurate (I have no idea).

And in my experience? The media is mostly trustworthy.
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lol 😀

The one absolute truth is that the Trump administration is far less trustworthy -- it's so bad that you can basically assume its spokespeople are lying whenever they speak.
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Your opinion =/= absolute truth.
 
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