Americans do not trust the major tv news operations in the country- except for Fox News.
Our newest survey looking at perceptions of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News finds Fox as the only one that more people say they trust than distrust. 49% say they trust it to 37% who do not.
CNN does next best at a 39/41 spread, followed by NBC at 35/44, CBS at 32/46, and ABC at 31/46.
Predictably there is a lot of political polarization in which outlets people trust. 74% of Republicans trust Fox News, but no more than 23% trust any of the other four sources. We already knew that conservatives don’t trust the mainstream media but this data is a good prism into just how deep that distrust runs.
For Democrats the numbers are a complete opposite- a majority trust all of ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC while only 30% have faith in Fox News. Continuing the trend in our polling over the last few months that independents hate everything, a plurality of them distrust all five outlets we looked at.
[…]
These numbers suggest quite a shift in what Americans want from their news. A generation ago Walter Cronkite was the most trusted man in the country because of his neutrality. Now people trust Fox the most precisely because of its lack of neutrality. It says a lot about where journalism is headed.
How anyone could trust anything they see on TV is beyond me.
Of course Republicans trust Fox, it’s the Republican network. Duh!
Of course, Fox viewers are the most ignorant too.
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/16/daily-show-fox-knowledge/
The results about Fox News echo findings of previous surveys. In 2003, University of Maryland researchers studied the public’s belief in three false claims — that Iraq possessed WMD, that Iraq was involved in 9/11, and that there was international support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The researchers stated, “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions.” Fox News viewers were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions.”
I would imagine the reason for this is that CNN and MSNBC, being left-leaning, try to tell us what to think (global warming, Bush caused Hurricane Katrina’s humanitarian fiasco, etc.) and FoxNews gets to debunk these claims.
Fox News is therefore in more of a position to act skeptical towards the rest of the media and people trust that role more.
Fox News is untrustworthy in an entirely different way, it sells baseline populism as “the truth” ignoring the underlying complexities of the world.
And the world ain’t so simple.
Oh dear. There is bias in all news, but the ‘news’ from Fox is beyond a joke. Its propaganda.
There’s lots of reasons the country isn’t looking so good right now. For democracy to work the people must be informed.
If the most trusted ‘news’ is clearly and blatantly propaganda, then it shows how low we have sunk and how much of a hole we are in.
#2 Dream on. Fox is the right-wing network. They spin everything that way.
And I always chuckle when people describe multi-billion dollar international corporations like CNN and MSNBC as “left leaning”.
You Fox fans are leaning so far over to the right that everyone else looks left wing to you.
Answer is much simpler: Fox is less to the Right than all other networks are to the Left. Closest one to the real neutrality – wins…
@#3 NBC, CBS, ABC are even worse joke & propaganda. That’s the point that yields these poll results.
Oh and in case you think fox is news then check out the film ‘outfoxed’. It’s free to watch here…
They themselves admit that most of fox ‘news’ isn’t news at all but opinion pieces. They present it as if its news mind you. Why? We’ll you figure it out.
Liberal or Conservative, you must admit that FoxNews does car chases the best. Although they did get punked into thinking some kid was stuck in a flying-saucer-shaped balloon.
@ Phydeau
You are the one who embraces partisan politics. Neither party is interest in serving “the people”.
Feel free to argue with your right-wing dweedle-dum counterparts to your dweedle-dee.
You aren’t any different than them except being approximately just as wrong but in the opposite way.
#5 dusanmal
I absolutely agree all channels have a bias. In fact I think Fox has made it all work. Because it showed you that you can be popular if you show people the news they ‘want’, as opposed to trying to show how it is. Msnbc is the channel which has most obviously decided, being neutral is not the way to go.
Still pretending that its okay is foolish.
Pretending that the other channels are the same or worse, is just not true.
Saying that fox is the center, means you must be so far to the right as to be physically painful. You must have fallen off the end. It’s not the center or anywhere near it. You know it. I know it. Let’s call a spade a spade.
Fox does this thing where it equates, popularity with something else. Like OReilly will argue something on another channel is wrong or stupid – because fox is more popular. That is not a argument.
You have kind of done the same, by equating popularity to being ‘the center’ when it is not.
Jim, my late father in law (WWII vet, fairly conservative) used to be a Fox News fan before Katrina.
We happened to be visiting him and my mother in law when the hurricane hit. Jim soon realized that Fox was BSing the public and that rescue efforts were being hampered, yet Fox was saying everything was working to plan.
Jim got disgusted with everyone in the rescue efforts but Lt. Gen. Russel Honore who took charge of the military, and saved thousands.
Fox said FEMA was doing a wonderful job.
Jim stopped watching Fox News.
dusanmal, your opinion of how far right Fox News leans isn’t shared by anyone but Fox viewers. The major broadcast networks tend to lean right these days in an attempt to straddle the gap between the Fox noise machine and everything else.
http://mediamatters.org/research/200910130047
If you can find anything remotely equivalent regarding any other national news outlets I’m interested in reading it. I’d like to read facts, not opinion.
Didn’t CNN try to fact check a SNL skit on Obama (something CNN never did under Bush)?
And then Jon Stewart lampooned them. 🙂
http://tinyurl.com/yl48jul
The Democrats watch the other networks because their to the left themselves. Nobody who supports their party wants to hear how bad its going. But Democrats are self destructing before our eyes because within their own party is disagreement. I think our government would be better off with more independents. I think the two party rule has stagnated government. No matter who is President or who controls Congress they are in gridlock. That is not good for America no matter which part you support.
I’d rather get my news from Jon Stewart than any of the news networks.
I’d trust CNN a bit more if they actually did “news” stories. They’ve switched from 24-hour news to 24-hour gossip with Nancy Grace.
MSNBC weathered a storm of complaints throughout the campaign that the left-leaning viewpoints expressed by Olbermann and Matthews were tainting the cable channel and its sister broadcast network, NBC.
http://tinyurl.com/9uvnoj
Bill Maher Mocks the MSNBC-Obama “Love Fest”: http://tinyurl.com/ydgw27q
Keith Olbermann Admits Media Is In The Tank For Barack Obama: http://tinyurl.com/ycrc6kj
So that makes Fox the fifth of the 4 out of five dentists surveyed about sugarless gum. Hummmm makes me think the people who believe Fox just want to have there fears and preconceived notions confirmed and not challenged or want any new information.
BBC America ,PBS, NPR, even the Daily Show for real news CNN for fluff news with fancy gadgets, MSNBC and FOX for your tooth rotting sugared gum and the rest so you can look at the pretty people with all that plastic surgery talking.
Katie Couric Admits Liberal Bias: http://tinyurl.com/ydaw6nc
Fox News Bias?: http://tinyurl.com/n4cqms
Two kinds of people, not two kinds of parties. 1. People who do not want the responsibility for their ideas or ideals and need to hear dogma from authoritative sources. 2. People trying to work things out for themselves that mistrust authoritative sources.
Obviously free thinkers won’t all go to the same sources, just as the sheeple have the obsessive need to go to the approved source for information.
It doesn’t reflect a partisan political truth, just a basic human social truth.
What they didn’t state was the sample size, which is the number of people polled. In this case it was 12.
22, Amodedoma, We are all inherently biased even when we try to be objective some of our own personal biases come through. I personally don’t have any faith in objective news casting. I think Fox News if nothing else tries harder to be a devil’s advocate when a dissenting opinion is needed.
That being said, I prefer to get my news from overtly biased sources and then come to my own conclusions.
23, Rabble Rouser, Funny. But the survey does state it is of 1,151 registered voters.
I agree with Dvorak, FOXnews is actually run by the Democrats as a “dis-information” service. The more FOXnews looks crazy, the more it makes the “lefty news” look normal.
This also proves that most americans don’t want real news.
#25 BigBoyBC
‘FOXnews is actually run by the Democrats as a “dis-information” service. ‘
The article is about fox being the ‘most trusted news source’. So how does yours or Dvoraks explanation work – as apparently ‘The more FOXnews looks crazy,’ the more trusted it is.
And therefore how is that in the Democrats interest, hmmm?
Please. Engage. Brain.
Go ahead, ask yourself who watches TV to get their news anymore? Chances are if you’re reading this you’re not one of them. From time to time I watch Fox news, to the point where I start feeling like shouting at the TV, or CNN till it nearly puts me to sleep, then I switch it back to History or National Geographic.
#20 Howard said it before I could.
Anyway, the “news” on TV is no more about reality than American Idol is. On any commercial channel.
“A new poll asking Americans”
–lets do the math–
Well only 1151 of you were asked we are not saying how many of those refused to answer might have bees a survey of only10 for all we know. No mention of the demographic just that they were registered voters. What neighborhoods what percentage of them were Republicans, Democrats, Independents, skin heads.. ect ? Was Dick Cheney one of the 10?
74% of Republicans are saying they trust the right leaning Fox network.
None of the so-called left leaning sites are any where near that high among Democrats
It’s the Republicans marching in lockstep could have skewed this small sample; this sounds like kind of pseudo facts only Fox would broadcast.
Take a statistics class fools. This one’s for the sheep
#26 hit it on the head. People (sheeple) want to be entertained and fed with with “prepackaged opinions”.
No thinking neccessary, just repeat what you heard on Fox and pretend your “up to date”.
sorry for all the typos