Gallup: Trust in American media reaches (another) all-time low

The Hill reports.

Here's Kyle Kulinski's coverage of the news:



(Secular Talk is a so-called "new media" outlet, and therefore Kyle has all the crassness and obnoxiousness that usually come from unscripted news reporting- so you'd have to look past some of his mannerisms and comic exaggerations)

I especially want people associated with media to weigh in on this (I wonder where they Went).

Well, given how the recent US election is being run like a three-ring circus, I don't blame people for hating the media.

This comes as no surprise to me -- I personally stopped watching the mainstream media during coverage of the deaths of unarmed black men by police officers (though I didn't trust it much before that either). It seemed like no matter what side a journalist took, they were more concerned about inciting outrage than reporting things factually. Unless a piece of journalism is explicitly identified by the writer as an opinion piece, I should have no inclination of their political leanings from their report. It is perhaps even worse in periodicals, where op-eds are frequently passed off as "news". It doesn't make it better that we have such polarizing Presidential candidates this election cycle. As you see people start to tune out, expect media tactics to get only worse as they struggle to attract people back into the foray of Presidential politics.

It's super easy to blame the media, and is usually done with abandon. Literally every single new media outlet I listen to- liberal and conservative- put a hefty amount of blame for the media for pretty much everything that's happening. Ranting about the uselessness of media as such, to me at least, has become something of a non-discussion. I want someone to give me the other side of the story. Do people in the media see things somewhat differently? Is there another angle accessible to them that we're not seeing? That's what I'm primarily interested to know.

There is a reason why more and more people are getting their news from smaller independent media and social media.

I feel my ears buzzing.

Anyway, BadSheep pointed at the problem. It's a circular issue. Decades ago, you could only have "mainstream media" directed at everybody because it just wasn't economical to do anything else, so you had to make it one-size-fits-all. At some point though, cable TV and the internet made it possible to make "niche media" better tailored to the ideas of small parts of the population. And people love to be told that their ideas are popular and other people agree with them. So "universal" media, like newspapers and free TV channels who aim at everybody end up alienating most everybody because at some point or another, they'll see their beliefs challenged. And why would you, if you can flock to a niche media that will fit your ideas much better?

I myself am guilty of that- I recently ended my subscription to the largest Spanish newspaper as it lurched rightwards and subscribed to a more lefty online newspaper. And I myself work in an economic daily, which, by definition, is not "mainstream" but rather pretty niche (and yet makes good money, since you can sell better targeted ads to your readers). You can see in the poll how the Republicans, who have many more "niche" media parroting their beliefs (Fox, Breitbart, Drudge, etc) are the largest "media haters". And I'm sure that most of that 50% of democrats would rather watch MSNBC and read Salon.com than NBC or TNYT.

So, in the end, the "mainstream media" is being slowly killed off by an army of small niche media people feel closer to. The result is the inability to understand each other, as our visions of the same events are heavily distorted by who we listen to- which is bad. But, again, going back is just impossible at this point.

Went, this question might sound awfully naive, but I feel your post is centered around the premise of media having to cater to people. Why do we expect all forms of media to lean one way or the other, as opposed to just reporting the facts as they are? Consider the example about Vietnam that Kyle makes in the clip I posted. He made it seem like the media back then was concerned with just reporting what happens in the world, as opposed to interpreting it this way or the other in line with different ideologies. I mean this question is so naive that I feel awkward mentioning it- reporting the truth as it is seems a very straightforward concept. Why not just take that as a model? Or is it because of some underlying incentive structures of the media that TheMasses(TM) aren't privy to?