Trust in media at record-setting lows. Not just in USA either

To me and others who think as I do, this is not surprising at all and the lack of trust is very deserved on the part of the people who claim to be reporting the news. I think that many people became a lot more aware of the bias of media once social media became part of almost everyone's daily life though even though the bias was almost certainly always there.

For anyone during the last 2 Presidential elections, trust has dipped to record setting lows. I can see no real reason to trust any media outlet at all and I am one of those people that tends to lean towards believing whatever the opposite of what they are trying to say is. I feel this way regardless of what their political leanings are too and I feel bad for anyone that I meet that clearly has a political bias and therefore "trusts the media outlets that they do based on nothing discernable other than the news they prefer is news that agrees with their own opinions, even if they are misguided.

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It isn't just the United States that feels this way though, even though that is the one that at least for me is most easily identifiable as being 90% bullcrap. If you look at the above chart I find it humorous that in basically every country in the world there is a slight "bump" in "trust" if you ask the respondents about "news I use."

I know quite a few people whose decisions seem to be made by the "news they use" rather than looking at the bigger picture and realizing that all media has an objective and if they can onboard you based on your pre-existing opinions and biases, there is very little chance that they are ever going to present anything other than that to you. Therefore, they get you boxed in and well, a person becomes incapable of ever viewing anything that happens in the world any other way than the potentially very narrow-minded preset that is part of the "news I use."

I find these days that the best way to get any sort of unbiased information on news is to go to meme sites and look at the comments because even though it is filled mostly with vitriol and name-calling, there are a few individuals that meticulously break down almost any situation with sources. There aren't any MSM outlets that I am aware of that do this sort of thing.

The USA trust in the media dropped to below 30% during Covid and I think if those 30% who said they "do trust the media" were actually being honest that most of them are simply pleased that the media they choose to listen to just happens to agree with whatever it is that they already believe in.

Trust in media at least in the United States has recovered a little bit, but I think that this isn't genuine trust but rather just the MSM getting better at accepting their now quite limited user base, and continuing to tell them what that audience wants to hear. When was the last time any major media outlet did some sort of report that breaks with their network's overall political theme? I can't think of any and even if they did, whoever did that was probably just some "whipping boy" that they employ in order to attempt to create some sort of illusion of non-bias.

One example of this would be the absolutely absurd talk show The View where they will have some sort of conservative woman on their panel that just gets absolutely bullied by the 4 other liberals that are in their ranks, every single show. The "conservative" member of their ranks is probably hand-selected for being kind of weak as well. I can't say for sure about this because I feel as though anyone that watches "The View" or any other show like it is perpetually diminishing their own intelligence. Another example would be years ago when Fox News was attempting to brand themselves as "Fair and Balanced" and they had a show called Hannity and Colmes. Sean Hannity, love him or hate him, was charismatic and a master debater. Alan Colmes on the other hand appeared weak, spoke weak, and was generally forgettable. Did they have a liberal on the show? Yeah sure, but Hannity absolutely dominated anything those two talked about and where is Colmes now?

I enjoy seeing polls that suggest that people around the world distrust almost all news and in many ways I feel as though the people who do the polls are probably rigging them in order to get a desired result or at the minimum make the results appear better than they actually are. Personally, I don't know anyone that I consider to be above average intelligence that trusts any news at all.

I know it is cliché at this point but I truly believe that it is better to not listen to the news and be uninformed than it is to listen to the news and be misinformed.

All news is Dumb News at this point and other than non-political puff pieces written by publications that almost nobody reads like The Economist even have a shred of truth to them.