A recent national poll found American’s faith in traditional media to be holding at extremely low levels, and with no signs of improvement in sight. Here are the numbers, from Gallup.com:
Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news — with no more than 25% of Americans saying they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in either. These views have hardly budged since falling more than 10 percentage points from 2003-2007.
The findings are from Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions survey, which found the military faring best and Congress faring worst of 16 institutions tested. Americans’ confidence in newspapers and television news is on par with Americans’ lackluster confidence in banks and slightly better than their dismal rating of Health Management Organizations and big business.
The steady decline in trust and confidence for traditional media has been caused by several issues, but much blame can be laid on the increasing amount of unethical behavior by reporters and media outlets. As BCM President Jonathan Bernstein wrote in his article, “Fight Back Using The Journalistic Ethics Code,” also available in shorter form at his Huffington Post blog, the increase of globalized news via the Internet, falling ad revenue, and growing popularity of sensationalism have all contributed to this decline.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/