The news media vs news consumers

Imagine that an organization published a poll saying that most flyers think that the airlines don’t care about them.  Then imagine that the airlines came back saying that the flyers are stupid or living in the land of conspiracies.

Well, we have something like that going on with the news media. They keep looking for excuses for how the public feels about their work.  The news media needs to look at itself in the mirror and see the culprit.

Check out this poll via Paul Bedard:    

President Joe Biden’s election might have made the media feel good, but it’s done very little for the industry’s reputation with news consumers.

In the latest demonstration of the difficulties the news media face, a sizable 58% of likely voters told Rasmussen Reports that they believe the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” a phrase coined by former President Donald Trump.

Some 46% disagreed, but the highest number (34%) said that they “strongly agree” with Trump.

As with similar surveys during the Trump era, Democrats believe the media far more than Republicans. Now, 56% of Democrats “trust” the news they receive versus 58% of Republicans who don’t.

The partisanship is not surprising.

But there was some agreement on “fake news,” another Trump phrase, being a serious problem. A supermajority of Republicans, 92%, said it is a problem, as did 74% of Democrats. Overall, 83% said it is a big problem.

Notably, said Rasmussen, independents generally agree with Republicans on the “enemy of the people” question, at 61%.

Said the pollster, “Voters overwhelmingly believe ‘fake news’ is a problem, and a majority agree with former President Donald Trump that the media have become ‘the enemy of the people.’”

Wonder now why people are not watching the news channels?

We can agree or disagree with the line “enemy of the people” but we can not dispute that the news media was obsessed with Trump and let Biden sleep in his basement during the campaign.  Maybe they didn’t think that Biden would win and did not waste their time asking or demanding full press conferences.   Biden won and now he is executing the policies, from the border to energy pipelines, never discussed during the campaign.

So don’t blame the readers or viewers for believing that the media was, and is, in the tank for President Biden.  All you have to do is compare the press conferences, i.e. the wolves ready to attack Trump and the poodles asking their man for his favorite ice cream flavor.

The media has done this to itself.  It’s up to them to make journalism great again or continue to lose ratings.