A Breitbart News/Judicial Watch poll reveals the extent to which the public has lost trust in the media as an information outlet. The survey finds that 7 out of 10 adults do not trust the media to accurately inform them about the new healthcare law and five out of ten say so strongly.
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement. “I trust the media to accurately inform me about the new healthcare law.”
27% TOTAL AGREE
9% STRONGLY AGREE
18% SOMEWHAT AGREE
70% TOTAL DISAGREE
18% SOMEWHAT DISAGREE
52% STRONGLY DISAGREE
2% DO NOT KNOW
The distrust goes beyond partisan differences. Although Republicans are more likely to distrust the media, Independents and Democrats are notably skeptical as well.
Minorities are more likely to trust the media, with 45% of African-Americans and 42% of Hispanics saying so. But even in these cases, the majority of both groups are still more distrustful than not.
These results aren’t entirely surprising when we examine the recent admissions at prominent media outlets admitting their shortcomings regarding the scrutiny of Obamacare. Mark Halperin of Time Magazine admitted that: “…there is no doubt that the press failed to scrutinize this program [Obamacare] at the time of passage and during the context of the president’s re-election. Any reporter who would argue otherwise would be putting their head in the sand.”
Politico candidly asserted that GOP criticism of the Obamacare bill was dismissed because it was coming from the “alarmist” GOP. “Republicans in Congress have been quick to say that they warned of the dangers of the law. But the truth is that they sounded the alarms about so many threats, including dubious assertions about death panels and the slippery slope to a Canadian-style single-payer health care system, that they never put any sustained focus on the very specific tradeoffs people are seeing now.” But it is the media’s job to vet the claims against Obamacare and claims about Obamacare from the program’s supporters. Where was the media outrage the public was denied access to the bill to review, when Nancy Pelosi explained that we would have to pass the bill to find out what was inside it?
The consequences of such laziness have resulted in a public highly suspicious of the media’s role as information broker.
The Breitbart/Judicial Watch Poll was conducted by The Polling Company among 1000 adults, December 13-16 using live callers. The survey had a dual-frame sample of 65% landline, 35% cell phone with a margin of error of +/-3.1 at the 95% confidence level.
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