All those media-trust studies have a tendency toward the rote. Yes, we already knew that the public had little trust in the country’s journalistic organs. Yes, we knew that finding credible sources could be a harrowing pursuit for the public. Yes, we knew that an increasing portion of the U.S. public felt that the news was biased.
Yet this nugget from a new Gallup-Knight Foundation survey just about knocked the Erik Wemple Blog out of a decade-long media-research torpor:
Four in 10 [or 42 percent of] Republicans consider accurate news stories that cast a politician or political group in a negative light to always be “fake news.” [The corresponding figure for Democrats is 17 percent.]
Perhaps President Trump’s associates should place that data point in his daily briefing packet so that he can brag about it. There’s precedent for that, after all: Back in September 2016, a Gallup poll found cratering public trust in the media. Asked about that situation, Trump despaired not. “I think I had a lot to do with that poll … because I’ve exposed the media. If you look at the New York Times, and The Washington Post, and if you look at others: the level of dishonesty is enormous. It’s so dishonest. I can do something that’s wonderful and they make it sound terrible,” Trump said in an interview.
