Only 6% Rate News Media As Very Trustworthy

Most voters still get their news from television and consider the news reported by the media generally trustworthy.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of Likely U.S. Voters say they get most of their news from TV, including 32% who get it from cable news networks and 24% who get it from traditional network news. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that another 25% use the Internet as their main source of news, while only 10% still rely on print newspapers. Seven percent (7%) get most of their news from radio.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of all voters regard the news reported by the media as at least somewhat trustworthy, but that includes just six percent who think it is Very Trustworthy. Forty-two percent (42%) don’t trust the news media, with 12% who believe the news it reports is Not At All Trustworthy.

Last September, as the final stretch of the presidential race heated up, 40% of American Adults said the Internet was the best way to get news and information in today’s world, while 37% viewed television that way. Nine percent (9%) rated radio as the best source, and seven percent (7%) chose print newspapers. TV broadcast news was considered the most reliable, followed by the Internet and newspapers. Read more >>

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Anderson Cooper on new Gulf rule: Felony for media to go near booms, oil soaked wildlife

"News photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials -— working with BP -— who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible."

The end of the newspaper business

The Media Death Spiral

The circulation figures for the top 25 dailies in the US are out, and they're horrifying. The median decline is well into the teens; only the Wall Street Journal gained (very slightly).

I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren't there. At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . .

For twenty years, newspapers have been trying to slow the process with increasingly desperate cost cutting, but almost all are at the end of that rope; they can't cut their newsroom or production staff any further and still put out a newspaper. There just aren't enough customers who are willing to pay for their product what it costs to produce it.

The numbers seem to confirm something I've thought for a while: we're eventually going to end up with a few national papers, a la Britain, rather than local dailies. The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times (sorry, conservatives!) are weathering the downturn better than most, and it's not surprising: business, politics, and national upper-middlebrow culture. But in 25 years, will any of them still be printing their product on the pulped up remains of dead trees? It doesn't seem all that likely.

I met a freelancer this weekend who is doing all the things that most journalists did to get where they are, writing on the margins of the news business in the hopes of getting up enough of a portfolio to worm her way into the center. I wanted to give her hope . . . but the fact is, at the center there are now more existing journalists than jobs for them, meaning the outsiders have very little chance.

Maybe there will be jobs, online. But if so, more web outfits are going to have to get into the habit of paying salaries that will support an adult middle-class life. Right now, a lot of web outfits tend to churn through twenty-somethings who are also building their resumes . . . but I'm not sure how well this works in a world where a job churning out blog copy for pennies a word is the last stop in a journalistic career, rather than the first.

Poll: Public Distrust in Media At All Time High

Image via Wikipedia

The public is finally walking up to media bias, corruption, and cowardice in the face of political power. For years, main stream media have served as nothing more than stenographers for those in power, and handmaidens for the government.

Last December, for the first time in a Pew Research Center survey, more people said they got most of their national and international news from the internet than said newspapers were their main source.

Pew Research reports:

The public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans' views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media's performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.

Republicans continue to be highly critical of the news media in nearly all respects. However, much of the increase in negative attitudes toward the news media over the last two years is driven by increasingly unfavorable evaluations by Democrats.

On several measures, Democratic criticism of the news media has grown by double-digits since 2007. Today, most Democrats (59%) say that the reports of news organizations are often inaccurate; just 43% said this two years ago. Democrats are also now more likely than they were in 2007 to identify favoritism in the media: Two-thirds (67%) say the press tends to favor one side rather than to treat all sides fairly, up from 54%. And while just a third of Democrats (33%) say news organizations are "too critical of America," that reflects a 10-point increase since 2007.

The partisan gaps in several of these opinions, which had widened considerably over the past decade, have narrowed. There are some notable exceptions to these trends, however, as Republicans increasingly see news organizations as influenced by powerful people and organizations and not professional, while Democrats' views have changed little.

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press' biennial media attitudes survey, conducted July 22-26 among 1,506 adults reached on landlines and cell phones, finds that even as the party gaps in several criticisms of the press have lessened over the past few years, views of many individual media sources are deeply divided along party lines.

Democrats hold considerably more positive views than Republicans of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the news operations of the broadcast networks, and their views of National Public Radio are somewhat more favorable than those of Republicans. By contrast, views of Fox News -- and to a lesser extent The Wall Street Journal -- are more positive among Republicans than Democrats.

Partisan differences in views of Fox News have increased substantially since 2007. Today, a large majority of Republicans view Fox News positively (72%), compared with just 43% of Democrats. In 2007, 73% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats viewed Fox News favorably. Three-quarters (75%) of Democrats assess CNN favorably, while just 44% of Republicans do so, which is little changed from two years ago. MSNBC also rates substantially higher among Democrats (60%) than among Republicans (34%).

But the starkest partisan division is seen in assessments of The New York Times. Although most Americans are not familiar enough with the Times to express an opinion, Republicans view The New York Times negatively by a margin of nearly two-to-one (31% to 16%), while Democrats view it positively by an almost five-to-one margin (39% to 8%). More independents rate the Times favorably (29%) than unfavorably (18%).

More favorable Republican ratings are reserved for The Wall Street Journal. Within the GOP, the balance of favorable to unfavorable assessments of the Journal is second only to that for Fox News. Democratic and independent assessments of The Wall Street Journal are also, on balance, positive. And the balance of opinion regarding National Public Radio is favorable across the board; however, Democratic opinions of NPR are somewhat more positive than those of Republicans (50% favorable vs. 39% favorable).

The poll finds that television remains the dominant news source for the public, with 71% saying they get most of their national and international news from television. More than four-in-ten (42%) say they get most of their news on these subjects from the internet, compared with 33% who cite newspapers. Last December, for the first time in a Pew Research Center survey, more people said they got most of their national and international news from the internet than said newspapers were their main source.

However, online news lags behind newspapers as a source for news about local issues. As with national and international news, most people (64%) cite television as their main source for local news. Yet despite declines in newspaper readership over the last several years, about four-in-ten people (41%) turn to newspapers for news about issues and events in their local area, more than twice the number that turn to the internet for local news (17%).

The public's impressions of which news organizations do the most to uncover local news stories largely mirror the top sources for local news. More than four-in-ten (44%) say that local television stations do the most to uncover and report on important local issues, while a quarter (25%) identify local newspapers as the primary sources of local news reporting. Far fewer people identify local independent online organizations (11%) or radio stations (10%) as responsible for uncovering most local news stories. Even among those who get most of their local news from newspapers, about as many say most original local reporting is done by television stations (41%) as by newspapers (38%).

Long-Term Views of Press Performance

The public has long been critical of the press in several areas: in 1985, majorities said that news organizations tried to cover up mistakes, tended to favor one side on political and social issues and were influenced by the powerful.

However, in that initial survey on press performance, conducted by the Times-Mirror Center, most people (55%) said that news organizations "get the facts straight," while 34% said stories were often inaccurate.

Opinions about the accuracy of news stories fluctuated over the next decade, but by the late 1990s majorities said that news stories are often inaccurate. That has been the case for the past decade as well, with the exception of a brief period in fall 2001, when coverage of 9/11 and terrorism boosted the press's positive ratings. In the current survey, 63% say news stories are often inaccurate.

Similarly, the proportion saying news organizations "try to cover up their mistakes" has reached a high of 70%, up from 63% two years ago. In 1985, a smaller majority (55%) said news organizations tried to cover up their mistakes. And while most Americans (59%) see news organizations as "highly professional," the proportion expressing this view also has slipped since 2007 (66%). In 1985, 72% said news organizations were highly professional.

The pattern is the same regarding public attitudes about whether the press is biased, deals with all sides fairly, and is independent.

In 1985, fewer than half (45%) said news organizations were politically biased, while 36% said they were careful to avoid bias. Today, by greater than two-to-one (60% to 26%), more say the press is biased.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) say news organizations tend to favor one side in dealing with political and social issues, while just 18% say they deal fairly with all sides. The proportion saying the press favors one side has risen eight points since 2007 (from 66%). In 1985, a much smaller majority (53%) said the press favored one side.

There has been a comparable shift in views of the press's independence. Nearly three-quarters (74%) now say news organizations are influenced by powerful people and organizations compared with 20% who say they are pretty independent. In 1985, by a far smaller margin, more said that news organizations were influenced by the powerful than said they were pretty independent (53% to 37%).

Notably, the balance of opinion about whether news organizations are liberal or conservative has changed little since 1985. At that time, about twice as many said the press was liberal than conservative (40% vs. 19%). That continues to be the case today (50% vs. 22%), although somewhat more people offer an opinion about this issue than did so then.

Continue reading the full report at people-press.org.

The Coming Media Bailout

Image by Ambrosiana Pictures (P) via Flickr

by Justin Raimondo

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which usually concerns itself with "consumer protection" issues, is now taking an interest in the journalism industry. The financially strapped New York Times reports:

"The commission is planning two days of workshops in December – titled ‘From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?’ – to examine the state of the news industry."

This ominous development ought to scare the pants off of anyone concerned with the maintenance of a free society – and the continued existence of dissent in an increasingly conformist profession where "journalists" are often reduced to the status of mere stenographers as they eagerly communicate to the masses the words, wishes, wit, and wisdom of government officials.

The FTC was the progeny of the "Progressive" Era, which, as Murray Rothbard reminds us, "begins around 1900 with Teddy Roosevelt and so forth. Woodrow Wilson cements it with his so-called reforms which totally subject the banking system to federal power and with the Federal Trade Commission, which did for business what the Interstate Commerce Commission did for the railroads. In other words, he imposed a system of monopoly capitalism, or corporate state monopoly, which we now call the partnership of the government and of big business and industry, which means essentially a corporate state, or we can call it economic fascism."

The creation of the FTC was occasioned by a campaign for the radical expansion of the federal government, and, not coincidentally, the beginning of World War I – a set of circumstances that roughly resembles what we are experiencing today. This gives a particularly sinister edge to the FTC’s sudden interest in the struggling newspaper industry and remarks by FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz to the effect that "Competition among news organizations involves more than just price."

That’s indubitably true: it’s all about content. Yet one fails to see how – in a free society – the government can concern itself with such matters. Or why it should. That is, until one reads onward in the Times piece, and discovers that Leibowitz "is married to Ruth Marcus, an editorial writer at the Washington Post."

The Post, like all newspapers, is losing money hand over fist: apparently its niche as the voice of elite opinion and the conventional wisdom isn’t paying off. Those "lunches" with powerful politicians and grasping lobbyists might have made some big bucks, if the whole shady business hadn’t blown up in their faces and forced them to cancel. So, when all else fails, these sorts instinctively turn to the government for some advantage or handout, although the exact nature of the "newspaper bailout" that all too many journalists have been talking about has yet to take shape. That’s what these "workshops" are for: they’ll figure out a way to feed at the public trough and no doubt come up with a credible-sounding rationale, as per the Times piece:

"Though some may be uncomfortable with government oversight of any aspect of journalism, the F.T.C. seems to be ‘attempting to play a facilitating and public educational role in gathering together various disciplines and perspectives to talk about the crisis in mainstream journalism,’ said Neil Henry, a professor and dean at the graduate school of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. ‘The government’s willingness to raise the profile of this issue, and to help explain why it is important for a national conversation, I think in general is welcome.’"

The tone is unmistakable: those few archaic types who may experience discomfort at the thought of some Washington bureaucrat prescribing a cure for what ails journalistic enterprise are living fossils, ungrateful wretches, and paranoid to boot. No need to worry, though: Professor Henry assures us the Feds are just "facilitating" the "national conversation" – but who started this conversation, anyway? A bunch of self-styled "mainstream" journalists and a government bureaucrat married to one, who have a pecuniary interest in finagling federal funding for their cash-strapped employers and stifling the competition, i.e., Internet-based news organization (such as, say, this one).

As the FTC Web site puts it:

"The workshops will consider a wide range of issues, including: the economics of journalism and how those economics are playing out on the Internet and in print … online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the variety of governmental policies – including antitrust, copyright, and tax policy – that have been raised as possible means of finding new ways for journalism to thrive."

So what this means is that the Old Journalism is going to deploy an agency of the federal government to regulate the industry in order to save these tired old dinosaurs who don’t deserve to survive in the first place. They’ll use every weapon in the government’s arsenal to do it: antitrust laws (watch out, Craigslist!), copyright laws (forget about linking to an Associated Press story: that’s copyright infringement!), and "tax policy" – if we can’t get them by hook or by crook, we’ll just tax the New Media to death. That‘ll teach them to respect their elders!

Note, also, that the professor is very specific in his concerns: it’s "the crisis in mainstream journalism" he’s oh-so-worried about and that the government is going to find a solution to – as opposed to, you know, the other kind of journalism, which is all icky, not to mention downright disreputable.

So what is it about "mainstream journalism," anyway, that led to this supposed "crisis," which government facilitators – such as a man married to a Washington Post columnist – are going to lead us out of?

Well, I’m just guessing, but maybe "consumers" – i.e., readers – weren’t at all happy with the level and nature of the coverage provided by the Old Journalism. Maybe they began to distrust and finally abandon completely all those "news" organizations that reported with a straight face the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Maybe the social and political collusion that goes on in Washington between government officials and "journalists" led them to distrust the latter as much as they disdain the former. It hardly matters that these consumers don’t need or want "protection" from bloggers and non-"mainstream" news sources – but you can bet your bottom dollar they’re going to get it anyway. After all, the Nanny State knows best: we’re from the government, and we’re here to help…

Yeah, right!

The "mainstream" media is, by definition, the instrument and servant of the state. The Washington Post, for example, doesn’t challenge the conventional wisdom; rather, it lives to enforce it as accepted fact. And when the "facts" turn out to be otherwise, as in the case of Iraq’s WMDs – well, then, "Oops! That’s what everybody thought!"

And, of course, the media did a lot to ensure the election of our current president. Without all that favorable – even fawning – coverage, he might not have gotten the Democratic nomination and sailed to victory quite as easily as he did. So this sudden interest in the preservation of "mainstream" journalism is the payoff. In the American spoils system, all the victor’s foot soldiers are rewarded with their fair share of the pelf.

The idea that the FTC is going to start regulating the journalism business – or even start a "national conversation" about the prospect of doing so – ought to send chills down the spines of every real journalist in this country. Unfortunately, it won’t: most of these guys and gals are self-styled "progressives" who can’t very well make an argument against government intervention in their industry while they endorse bailing out the rest of the economy. Why, the government is our friend – and if you don’t believe that, you’re a wacko extremist who’s probably bringing guns to town hall meetings.

The way they’ll lull liberals into accepting this unprecedented FTC "interest" in journalism is to aver that this is Obama’s government we’re talking about here, and he would never countenance government control of the news industry. Our guy is in the saddle – so don’t worry about that whip he’s carrying, because of course he won’t actually use it…

A media bailout is coming. They’ll think up some sort of half-a**ed rationale for it. Leave it to Professor Henry and his trendy confreres; that’s what they get paid for. They won’t call it government control of the news, they won’t acknowledge that’s what they want, but when the first news aggregator gets prosecuted by the FTC for "copyright infringement" and the indispensable Craigslist is slapped with a fine for "unfair competition," please don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The FTC couldn’t regulate Bernie Madoff, in spite of being tipped off about his activities and presented with evidence of crimes – but they sure can start a "national conversation" about saving the sorry a**es of the Washington Post and the New York Times. Well, I’d like to start a "national conversation" of my own – all about how scared, clueless, and terminally lazy "journalists" and their friends in high places are angling for advantage, at our expense. That’s one conversation Leibowitz, his fellow bureaucrats, and their journalistic handmaidens would never permit.

Read more by Justin Raimondo

• War Coverage and the Obama Cult – August 23rd, 2009

John Pilger's The two sides of Barrack Obama

John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, who began his career in 1958 in his homeland, Australia, before moving to London in the 1960s.

He regards eye-witness as the essence of good journalism. He has been a foreign correspondent and a front-line war reporter, beginning with the Vietnam war in 1967. He is an impassioned critic of foreign military and economic adventures by Western governments.

"It is too easy," he says, "for Western journalists to see humanity in terms of its usefulness to 'our' interests and to follow government agendas that ordain good and bad tyrants, worthy and unworthy victims and present 'our' policies as always benign when the opposite is usually true. It's the journalist's job, first of all, to look in the mirror of his own society."

He believes a journalist also ought to be a guardian of the public memory and often quotes Milan Kundera: "The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Noam Chomsky wrote: "John Pilger's work has been a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities he has brought to light have been a revelation, over and over again, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration."

Harold Pinter wrote: "John Pilger unearths, with steely attention, the facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is."

For more biographical details, go to the introduction in Articles

Murdoch is an endangered species - and he knows it

Image via CrunchBase

Make no mistake -- The Associated Press and the Rubert Murdochs of the world know the current news system is doomed. That's why they want to charge for their content -- their role is to protect power and the interests of the financial elite. The AP and Murdochs of the world want to maintain their superior priest-like positions as Godly news oligarchs. They want to stifle the new paradigm of citizen journalism that's gaining critical mass -- a paradigm where news is distributed horizontally.

Murdoch and his ilk are in imminent danger of extinction and they know it. They aren't simply going to lay down and die. They'll use every last dollar from their millions to destroy bloggers and the growing monumental shift in information gathering bloggers represent. Media moguls are aware that to some extent they have bloggers over a barrel. It costs money to finance news gathering teams across the globe. And there's only a handful of wire services that dominate the entire news landscape, a landscape all of us are imprisoned and beholden to for what the media monopoly decides is news.



Murdoch losses of $136 million this year and $57 million a year earlier, have nothing to do with free content. "Quality journalism is not cheap," said Murdoch, "and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting."

The only quality journalism and good reporting Murdoch has achieved is how well he's managed to cannibalize the truth. Murdoch's media group spews out a shameless stream of lies, deception, and propaganda. Murdoch's only interest is in preserving his media mogul status and proto-fascist, top-down structure of information distribution; the same can be said for rags like the Huffington Post that serve as a mouth piece for Obama.

Murdoch's pathetic pledge to charge for content will fail, pure and simple. He will not create a mass parade of would-be content followers. On the contrary, his pay-for-content scheme will only hasten the destruction of his entire media mega-structure. Murdoch may generate revenue from those of like minds willing to pay for his hysterical evangelistic version of news, but it will all backfire.

His greedlust will foster the healthy media competition he clearly opposes. Murdoch may succeed in attracting a small, loyal band of paying Jim Jones-like followers who will worship him as a journalistic hero, but the real heroes are bloggers forced to wade through the manure he and others call news. As it stands now, bloggers must arduously sift through information from wire agencies -- and the subsequent spin by retail outlets -- for little nuggets of truth: it's like panning for a few small specks of gold in a murky river of lies.