But while Trump’s rhetoric is often among the most venomous, this is not due to him alone. (Of course, Trump himself has merely picked up and amplified a long-standing tendency on the right to view the media as an enemy.) In recent years, there has also been particularly harsh criticism from the left, with complaints that the press is not tolerant enough of the left, or overly friendly to the right and to Trump.
Americans simply don’t trust the media, especially when it comes to politics. A battleground state poll conducted by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Government found that only 3 in 10 residents of the six states most important in this year’s presidential election trust the media to cover political news fairly and accurately. 7 in 10 people said they have little or no trust in the media to cover political news fairly and accurately.
As expected, this lack of trust was more pronounced on the political right. For example, only 13 percent of white evangelical Protestants in these states said they trusted the media to cover politics fairly; the remaining 87 percent did not. Those who said podcasts or X (formerly Twitter) were their main source of news were much more likely to be skeptical of political coverage than battleground state voters overall.
The Post-Scher School poll found that trust in media coverage outweighed distrust among only a handful of groups, including Democrats, NPR listeners, and people who were happy with President Biden’s reelection. Even among other groups leaning more toward Biden, such as those with advanced college degrees, distrust far outweighed trust. (Among those with advanced college degrees, the ratio was nearly 2-to-1.)
The Post-Scher School poll focuses on the voters most likely to decide the election outcome in these states, a group it calls “deciders,” whose members trust the media far less than voters across the six states.
The numbers also suggest that people who are less engaged in the political process are less likely to trust the news media, and there’s a correlation between this result and another question in the poll: People who have less trust in the media’s coverage of politics are also more likely to say they’re “tired of the amount of political news these days.”
As bad as the numbers are on trust in the media, the numbers on political news fatigue are even worse: Seven in 10 battleground state voters express at least some distrust of media coverage, and three-quarters say they are fatigued by media coverage. The least likely to express news fatigue were those who said they were satisfied with both Biden and Trump, a rare and minority group in many ways.
Among those who have the most confidence in the media’s ability to cover politics fairly are those who say national newspapers are their main source of news, and yet seven in 10 of them (and probably you too) say they’re fed up with political news.
So, I should probably end this.
