Golly … why would Gallup still show that Americans’ trust in media continues to crater? We’ll get back to that after this important commercial advertisement from NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell on behalf of her sponsors. Newsbusters captured this special moment between Mitchell and Nancy Pelosi, in which Mitchell laments that voters can’t comprehend the magical combined genius of Pelosi and Joe Biden:
Mitchell began by noting that Democratic momentum in the polls that arose after the “huge outrage” at the Dobbs decision “has seemed to subside, at least among overriding concerns.” Mitchell considered this to be most unfortunate, “Despite all the legislative accomplishments and I want to cite them, I want to, you know, say it’s been an extraordinary session, you and the president have done so much in terms of domestic concerns, the economy.”
In her typical softball fashion, Mitchell then asked, “So, why is this message — why do you think the president hasn’t gotten it through to the voters?”
After some back-and-forth on whether Democrats should be concerned about recent polling noticeably did not talk about any of those “accomplishments.” Instead, she kept trying to make abortion a defining issue, “I’ve been in an average of five states a week and I can tell you that women’s concerns about their freedom are very, very much still very significant in terms of how they will vote. In fact, 80 percent of people who care about a woman’s right to choose say they will vote — it will determine who they vote for.”
This session has been “extraordinary,” I suppose, but not in the sense that Mitchell clearly intended. It demonstrated extraordinary overreach by Democrats, first with the hyperinflationary American Rescue Plan in March 2021, and then on practically every other item on Pelosi’s agenda.
The most extraordinary part of the past 22 months was their inability to do simple math in a 50/50 Senate. Rather than calculate policy on the centrist course Biden promised in 2020 to get as much done on their terms as possible, Democrats lurched to the far Left and got next to nothing done after the ARP. Even the so-called Inflation Reduction Act was a dishonestly labeled Trojan horse for a lame climate-change bill that did nothing to reduce inflation by a jot or a tittle — and voters damn well know that by now. It was nothing more than a cynical bait-and-switch to pay off progressive activists.
You’d think that a reporter might mention that as part of the “extraordinary” record of Pelosi’s last gasp as House speaker. But Mitchell had to squeeze in her commercial instead.
That brings us to the Gallup survey result on media credibility, brought to you by Mitchell and practically every other media outlet in America:
At 34%, Americans’ trust in the mass media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly” is essentially unchanged from last year and just two points higher than the lowest that Gallup has recorded, in 2016 during the presidential campaign.
Just 7% of Americans have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media, and 27% have “a fair amount.” Meanwhile, 28% of U.S. adults say they do not have very much confidence and 38% have none at all in newspapers, TV and radio. Notably, this is the first time that the percentage of Americans with no trust at all in the media is higher than the percentage with a great deal or a fair amount combined. …
At 27%, independents’ confidence is at the lowest point in the trend. This is also the first time that it has fallen below 30%. Meanwhile, 41% of independents say they have no trust at all and 32% do not have very much.
Even among their favored demo, media credibility is dimming:
While the great deal/fair amount of confidence reading among Democrats has never fallen below the majority level, the proportion with a great deal of trust has not topped 26%, and it is currently well below that at 18%.
Gee, I wonder why. The lack of any pretense of editorial independence at NBC/MSNBC clearly contributes to that, and for that matter the same dynamic at Fox aimed in the other direction does as well. The overwhelming majority of outlets — bordering on a near-monopolistic hold on public information and debate — goes in the same direction as NBC/MSNBC, which is why only Democrats trust media outlets these days … and even they’re starting to have some doubts, it seems.
In today’s latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast, Andrew Malcolm and I discuss my observations of the same editorial bias at the Washington Post, among other topics:
- Just how much in the bag is the Washington Post? Andrew Malcolm and I dissect the media “coverage” of January 6, the relative lack thereof of inflation and crime, and discuss the much more overt nature of editorial bias.
- We also discuss Andrew’s latest VIP columns at RedState and why it’s more necessary than ever to ask whether Biden is still capable of performing as president.
- No one outside of New York City likes the Yankees. (Our producer Jim vociferously dissents, by the way.)
The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!
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