Enemies of the People? Trump's Assault on the Press

[Phier]

This was floating around online today and sums up my feelings pretty well.




The press did this to themselves when they decided they were advocates and not journalists, they have promoted the idea of violence against Trump supporters and now complain when called out.

The press wants to reverse this? Stop lying.

[dogukan]

I can't believe Trump supporters here come up and say press did this to itself.
If press lost its credibility, doN't freaking watch it. Its simple as that. Its called free press. Change the channel. Don't watch.

Declaring them enemy of the people will cost lives and democracy.
I repeat, I am living ina country that is going exactly through this process. I have friends who work in media who go through this.

This is simply put, 3rd world behaviour. Goes to show how many of the Trump supporters have no difference from 3rd world mobs. I asssure you, with this attitude, if you live in where I live, you guys would have no difference to those Islamic mobs that you love to bash here. Your reasoning is EXACTLY like them, exactly.

[Heathen Hammer]

I can't believe Trump supporters here come up and say press did this to itself.
If press lost its credibility, doN't freaking watch it. Its simple as that. Its called free press. Change the channel. Don't watch.

Declaring them enemy of the people will cost lives and democracy.
I repeat, I am living ina country that is going exactly through this process. I have friends who work in media who go through this.

This is simply put, 3rd world behaviour. Goes to show how many of the Trump supporters have no difference from 3rd world mobs. I asssure you, with this attitude, if you live in where I live, you guys would have no difference to those Islamic mobs that you love to bash here. Your reasoning is EXACTLY like them, exactly.

There is no such thing as free press (since most of mainstream media is owned by a handful of corporations, it is neither free nor press), and yes, this is what is happening, thanks to streaming services and youtube, less people are watching it. Mainstream media (as what you refer to as "free press") is dying, of course not because of evil Trump, but because it was left behind by technological progress. Once its main audience, the boomer, goes extinct, so will CNN, MSNBC, NYP, WP, and all the other networks and newspapers that spout establishment propaganda 24/7 (for which, btw they deserve to be called enemies of the people).
But again, it wasn't Trump, it is Internet that is what is killing mainstream media, which is a good thing.

[Derpy Hooves]

And if he did, the rest of the press wouldn't care. They cheered at Obama having people thrown out in press briefings.

[Aexodus]

Look at this and tell me there’s no bias.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It’s not that negative coverage exists, it’s that the overbearing majority of the mass of media is negative. Fox news is the most watched in America. Give me an economic argument why the rest of the industry refuses to tap into that audience by at least being neutral (Fox is not neutral) instead of spewing out the same stuff.

Whoever it was whi said it was right, it’s hardly Bloomberg, Trump’s hardly bombasting them. It’s your CNN, MSNBC etc.

@Voltaire Did we forget Obama’s war on the press? On Fox? (Yes fox is biased, Obama is completely justified to call them out. And so is Trump.) Did we forget the espionage act of 2017? Trumo is Hitler because he dislikes the coverage, but it’s okay when Obama literally enacts press-limiting orders.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertai...304-story.html

And, in fairness to Trump, his administration has not escalated the conflict with the press to a new level. It has not yet come close to doing what President Obama's administration did in making the act of reporting itself criminal behavior in a case that started in 2009 under the Espionage Act of 1917.

At the heart of the case is James Rosen, chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, publishing information about North Korea that he received from a State Department employee.

In obtaining a subpoena to access Rosen's phone and computer records, the Justice Department labeled him "an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator." It also described him as a flight risk.

Branding a reporter that way in court documents had never been done by the government. Since the case was widely reported, I am surprised an act that really was unprecedented was overlooked by so many pundits in making their worst-ever analyses

Or, how about the Obama administration excluding Fox News from a round of interviews in 2009 with Kenneth Feinberg, then a Treasury Department official?

At the time, Feinberg was the administration official responsible for deciding the highly controversial issue of compensation for executives of companies being bailed out by the federal government after the economy nearly crashed. Access to him was a very big deal.

Emails later obtained by Judicial Watch about the matter included this one from Obama press secretary Josh Earnest to a Treasury Department spokesperson, saying, "We've demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews…"

The Treasury Department exclusion was part of a larger war that the Obama administration declared on Fox in October 2009 when Stephanie Cutter, White House communications director, went on CNN to denounce Fox as a "wing of the Republican Party" and say that the White House was going to stop treating them as a "news network." Administration heavy hitters David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel reinforced the message on other cable and network talk shows in subsequent days.

It was a public admission that the White House was punishing Fox for its negative coverage — the very thing some of the nation's leading editors labeled "unprecedented" when they believed it was happening to them with Spicer's gaggle.

I was in the middle of that battle as the only mainstream media critic to initially stand with Fox on the principle that the Executive Branch does not get to unilaterally decide what constitutes a real news network. So, please, don't tell me about how unprecedented Trump's actions against the press are.

But just in case you agree with Cutter that Fox isn't a real news outlet and, therefore, what happened to it is not the same as what's happening with Trump, check out what Obama's administration did to James Risen, an investigative reporter at The New York Times.

The Obama Justice Department spent seven years in court trying to force Risen to reveal his sources in its criminal investigation of a leak. Team Obama took the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Seven years with the threat of jail hanging over your head seems a lot worse than being excluded from an informal briefing with the press secretary on a Friday afternoon — especially when the content of that briefing would be available from pool reporters. But I lost count of all the cable heads saying in their best ominous voices last weekend how "chilling" Trump's action was.

Risen, a Puilitzer Prize winner, doesn't need me to make his case. Read his Times article published Dec. 30, 2016, under the headline: "If Donald Trump targets journalists, thank Obama."

Or, how about George W. Bush, who suddenly found himself aflame with First Amendment fervor this week in talking about the need for a free press? Bush's Justice Department helped put Judith Miller, then a New York Times reporter, in jail for three months for refusing to testify about her sources in the criminal leak case on the outing of Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. agent.

The article goes on to point out that NOTHING can compare to Johnson’s lies about ‘Nam.

Trump’s ‘war’ on the press is tame, and nothing new.

Obama is literally Bipler:

https://variety.com/2018/politics/ne...202782264/amp/

Obama, who campaigned on a promise to protect government whistle-blowers, made greater use of the Espionage Act to prosecute leakers and menace journalists than all other presidents combined.

Obama’s Justice Department accessed the personal email of a Fox News reporter and surveilled the reporter’s parents and colleagues. They seized the home, work and mobile phone records of journalists at the Associated Press.

Risen, who fought the administration to protect his sources, got so deep in his own legal battle with Obama that he selected a reading list for prison before the government finally backed off.

White House officials subverted the press in a number of ways while touting themselves as the most transparent in history.

Obama routinely banned news photographers from official events. He went months between press conferences and used social media to circumvent reporters.

First lady Michelle Obama took policy trips overseas with no press on her airplane. The White House scrubbed public visitor logs of names it didn’t want in the news.

The Obama administration posted the worst record in history for fulfilling requests for public records under the Freedom of Information Act. [freaking hell ‘Bama]

In a bleak episode of unintended irony, an open-government group gave Obama an award for transparency in an Oval Office ceremony closed to the press.

Trump may well end up being worse on press issues than Obama, and today’s White House reporters could be picking out their prison reading lists eventually.

But for now, those on duty there are guardedly hopeful.

Trump has proved more accessible than Obama and has not moved on threats against the industry. He has yet to discover the many uses of the Espionage Act, but he still needs to make time for a news conference.

[paladinbob123]

Look at this and tell me there’s no bias.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It’s not that negative coverage exists, it’s that the overbearing majority of the mass of media is negative. Fox news is the most watched in America. Give me an economic argument why the rest of the industry refuses to tap into that audience by at least being neutral (Fox is not neutral) instead of spewing out the same stuff.

Whoever it was whi said it was right, it’s hardly Bloomberg, Trump’s hardly bombasting them. It’s your CNN, MSNBC etc.

Sure negative coverage exists , for isn't it the job of the media , to hold leaders to account. If there own facts show there leader is behaving in a erractic manner , and acting in a way that no-other president has done before , why wouldn't it get coverage. Lets face it , trump himself is to blame here, for he loves the limelight , and seems to promote news where-ever he goes. He could have had a quiet meeting with Teresa may in England , as he shunned most of sights , settling for a the prime minsters resident in the countryside , and still managed to muck things up by telling the Sun what he thought she should do , and why she was doing things wrong....In such situations , who isn't surprised that he is in the media in a negative light.

As for fox's message isn't it a little like religion, where a group of people can bask in the easy news and shout out there blame on all matters on the outsider , whilst never once considering they themselves are to blame, and after watching a few hours of fox [a little like a few hail mary's] , they can vent there aggression and angers of the world , on whoever fox deems is the cause of all ills.

As for a economic reason why wouldn't fox , be sitting ok , as they probably receive benefits from some nice billionaires , for who wouldn't want to support a whole tv station that supports giving bigger and better tax breaks for the really rich

Other stations also have some media bias , and perhaps sometimes direct there own programs on issues which there own donours wish to focus on , so they are not blameless, but equally , they at least do stories , which are factual , which is certainly different to Fox.

[Katsumoto]

Huh? I never said there was no bias. I don't know what your point is. Are you saying Trump's attack on the media is justified because coverage of him is negative? You didn't really answer my questions:

"But for a President to deride coverage he doesn't like as fake news, despite it not being factually incorrect, and to make declarations such as "what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening", is borderline tyrannical, wouldn't you agree? Imagine if Obama had called Fox News the enemy of the people, despite their constant anti-Obama coverage, and despite them actually spreading fake news in a number of instances - would that not have been deeply problematic as well?"

[Aexodus]

Huh? I never said there was no bias. I don't know what your point is. Are you saying Trump's attack on the media is justified because coverage of him is negative? You didn't really answer my questions:

He’s justified responding however he wants bar censorship/threats etc to what may be unfair overall coverage. Ultimately voters decide. But a ‘war on the media’ is in no way special, new or unprecedented.

"But for a President to deride coverage he doesn't like as fake news, despite it not being factually incorrect, and to make declarations such as "what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening", is borderline tyrannical, wouldn't you agree?

It’s not tyrannical, that’s just his opinion which in no way affects their ability to print. But an espionage act might.

Imagine if Obama had called Fox News the enemy of the people, despite their constant anti-Obama coverage, and despite them actually spreading fake news in a number of instances - would that not have been deeply problematic as well?"

Obama has said Fox News viewers are “ living on a different planet”, a white house staffer said “We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” she says. “We don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”, and there was the “Fox News is the political wing of the republican party” thing.

And this

The Obama-Fox News feud is a reminder that presidents frequently clash with media outlets. In 1993, for example, Jacob Weisberg wrote in Vanity Fair about the White House press corps under Bill Clinton: “Four months into the new administration, relations between president and media hit what may have been their post-Watergate low.” Eleven years, Ken Auletta wrote in The New Yorker that George W. Bush “sees the press as ‘élitist’ and thinks that the social and economic backgrounds of most reporters have nothing in common with those of most Americans.”

here’s an nyt article on the Fox obama feud https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/b...dia/12fox.html

So bad media relations is nothing new. There is simply a larger volume of anti m-trump out there than anti obama.

[Katsumoto]

He’s justified responding however he wants bar censorship/threats etc to what may be unfair overall coverage. Ultimately voters decide. But a ‘war on the media’ is in no way special, new or unprecedented.

What is 'unfair overall coverage'? Trump has threatened the media, not to mention his daft tweet of him in WWE beating up a dude with a CNN logo imposed on his head. We've already established bad relations between the media and an administration are not unprecedented. The point is the extent of Trump's 'war on the media' is unprecedented. Virtually every other tweet he is referencing the 'fake news' or somehow attacking the press.

It’s not tyrannical, that’s just his opinion which in no way affects their ability to print. But an espionage act might.

It doesn't affect their ability to print, but it does affect the effectiveness of their role if the President has suggested they're always lying.

DeFranco, the warehouse worker who said she would be receiving an extra $300 from Trump’s tax cuts, also mentioned what she termed as the North Korea success.

“He’s negotiating. He’s working towards peace. He stopped the missiles,” DeFranco said.

On Monday, the Washington Post reported that North Korea was actually constructing new weapons. But DeFranco was not concerned. Instead, she echoed the “fake news” theme that had made up the bulk of Trump’s speech.

“I don’t believe anything coming out of mainstream media anymore. I don’t believe anything they say,” DeFranco said.

“And the problem here is if they ever do say something true, nobody’s going to believe them – because their track record is so bad.”

The anti-media sentiment was easy to detect at the rally, from people shouting profanities at the media during Trump’s speech, to the wariness of the crowd to talk to reporters.

Perhaps that idea – repeatedly reinforced by Trump – that the media is dishonest goes hand-in-hand with his supporters’ glowing assessment of his presidency so far.

To paraphrase DeFranco: even if what the media say about Trump is true, nobody at this rally was going to believe them.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...lly-supporters

Perhaps you're also unaware of the history of the phrase 'enemy of the people':

Donald Trump’s repeated use of the phrase “enemies of the people” in his attacks on the media has stoked anger and fear not only because of general concerns that he is demonising a pillar of American democracy, but because of its echoes of totaliariansim.

The phrase has old roots, even appearing in a Shakespeare play, but it became well known in the 20th century when it was adopted by dictators from Stalin to Mao, and Nazi propagandists, to justify their murderous purges of millions.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...eaning-history

Trump's comment that "what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening" is also practically a line out of 1984 - "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

Obama has said Fox News viewers are “ living on a different planet”, a white house staffer said “We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” she says. “We don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”, and there was the “Fox News is the political wing of the republican party” thing.

I don't really see how the two are comparable. Obama's confrontations with the media were few compared to Trump's endless tirades. I'm not going to condone that sort of language, but there seem to have been legitimate concerns about Fox's coverage of Obama, which the NYT article just seems to reinforce. Whereas Trump decries anything critical of him as fake, even if it's factually accurate. How is that justifiable? I did enjoy the irony of this quote by Fox News, though:

“Instead of governing, the White House continues to be in campaign mode, and Fox News is the target of their attack mentality,” Michael Clemente, the channel’s senior vice president for news, said in a statement on Sunday. “Perhaps the energy would be better spent on the critical issues that voters are worried about.”

[Aexodus]

What is 'unfair overall coverage'? Trump has threatened the media, not to mention his daft tweet of him in WWE beating up a dude with a CNN logo imposed on his head. We've already established bad relations between the media and an administration are not unprecedented. The point is the extent of Trump's 'war on the media' is unprecedented. Virtually every other tweet he is referencing the 'fake news' or somehow attacking the press.

While I understand your perspective, I have to disagree that the extent of his dispute is unprecedented compared to past presidents, while there’s plenty of bark, there’s zero bite so far. But yes, threatening the media like that is too far I agree. But the fact remains he hasn’t actually done anything.

[NorseThing]

Not only is this comparison ridicilous, it's also lazy whataboutism.

Most of the media targeted by Trump isn't guilty of yellow journalism, it's just guilty of reporting news Trump doesn't like. CNN can get a bit sensational but the vast majority of media attacked by Trump isn't making stuff up, it's not 'fake news'.

And which of Trump's targets are publishing fake news knowingly?

Huh? I never said there was no bias. I don't know what your point is. Are you saying Trump's attack on the media is justified because coverage of him is negative? You didn't really answer my questions:

"But for a President to deride coverage he doesn't like as fake news, despite it not being factually incorrect, and to make declarations such as "what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening", is borderline tyrannical, wouldn't you agree? Imagine if Obama had called Fox News the enemy of the people, despite their constant anti-Obama coverage, and despite them actually spreading fake news in a number of instances - would that not have been deeply problematic as well?"

Perhaps the problem is deciding what is fake news. Can it be fake news when all that is stated is technically true by parsing sentence by sentence even when the sum total is misleading? Is it fake news when the media omits news contrary to the editorial point they are attempting to pursue? Is it fake news when the editorial points are mixed into actual news reporting?

Every president disliked the reporting and coverage of their agenda. I remember when Lyndon Johnson was exasperated by the news reporting and how they would omit news by choice regarding the Vietnam war that supported the administration's view that the war was winnable. We can debate the probable outcome of future events, but to omit points that the Commander in Chief thinks are important to at least be reported and discussed seems a bit like today's fake news problem.

LBJ was a master at his own fake news:

Johnson was the opposite. "[He] loved to manipulate people, to control events, to feel like he'd put something over on somebody," wrote his longtime Senate aide Bobby Baker. "He loved the process--the flanker movements, pincer movements, the deployment of troops--almost as much as he savored the victories."
Johnson used to say that a president needed to court members of Congress like he courted his wife. He kept track of the vanities and vulnerabilities of the members he needed most and played on them. As Todd Purdum, author of An Idea Whose Time Has Come, the wonderful new history of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, points out, Johnson talked to his enemies and rivals not to convince them to go along with his program but to gain intelligence and create mischief.
It's tantalizing, even cinematic, to read about how Johnson operated. It suggests an efficiency almost foreign in Washington today where efforts by one entity can lead to a result that might help people. Johnson had once-in-a-lifetime skills given a boost by big congressional majorities in his party and the momentum of a national tragedy. Proof of how hard it is to move Congress comes not from a comparison to Obama but to John F. Kennedy. Though Kennedy operated in the same political era as LBJ--when it was easier to make deals and presidential threats were more powerful--he didn't achieve as much domestically as Obama did during the same period in his first term.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dont-be...imself-to-lbj/

Yet in the end it was the evening news with the pictures of Vietnam that ended his presidency. The pictures never did tell the complete story, but they told a story that convinced most Americans to end the war and to end the Johnson Presidency. Was it balanced reporting? Perhaps. Did the President consider it balanced reporting. Nope.
IS this different from what we see today. Probably not.

Take the recent Pres. Trump tweet that has the press all a twitter.

“Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower,” Trump wrote. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!”
That is a far different explanation than Trump gave 13 months ago, when a statement dictated by the president but released under the name of Donald Trump Jr.,. read: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago.”

http://time.com/5358336/donald-trump...linton-russia/

I could list dozens of other media reports that are all pretty much the same. Not one that I can find even surmises that both the earlier tweets and this one are possibly all correct. The problem may be the political expediency of truth with omission of details. This is the same problem with the media - truth with omission of details. Fake news is not new. Fake news is a problem. Politicians are just as guilty as the media.

We are obsessed with reports that the Russians are colluding or more accurately confusing the American public. Why shouldn't the Russians be doing this? We do it constantly and never ever call out when it happens. It is simply like the local weather reports that discuss a 7 day forecast and the next day the forecast is different for the days in common with the prior seven day forecast. No comment on the changes. Why confuse the public with the details?

AS detailed in a Pogo strip: "Yep. son. We have met the enemy and he is us." https://humorinamerica.wordpress.com...morous-phrase/ Read the article at the link for a view on the origins of the phrase and how is has changed over time up to Pogo. I dare say the enemy is still us.

[Thanatos]

We are obsessed with reports that the Russians are colluding or more accurately confusing the American public. Why shouldn't the Russians be doing this? We do it constantly and never ever call out when it happens. It is simply like the local weather reports that discuss a 7 day forecast and the next day the forecast is different for the days in common with the prior seven day forecast. No comment on the changes. Why confuse the public with the details?

You don't see any difference whatsoever between an in-group doing it for typical political gain versus an out-group with potential hostile intent in mind? That there really is no difference whatsoever? Come now.

[NorseThing]

You don't see any difference whatsoever between an in-group doing it for typical political gain versus an out-group with potential hostile intent in mind? That there really is no difference whatsoever? Come now.

Actually, there should be no difference but I realize our laws make such differences important. The problem is not really the differences, but the dishonesty of those who claim there are fundamental differences when it is in fact that the only differences are simply a matter of the law. Of course the media sees the false fundamental differences in their reporting and nothing about how the law treats things differently if it comes via a government or a private citizen of foreign origin or from a foreign based publicly held corporation or from a USA citizen or from a USA based publicly held corporation.

In other words, the media is more obsessed with killing the messenger and not the message. We should be more concerned about the accuracy of the message and a bit concerned about who then spreads a false message.

[Aexodus]

Yeah imagine that, if Obama’s communication director went on CNN to denounce Fox as a wing of the Republican Party...

Obama was worse to the media, but was far more intelligent about it.

[Katsumoto]

Yeah imagine that, if Obama’s communication director went on CNN to denounce Fox as a wing of the Republican Party...

Obama was worse to the media, but was far more intelligent about it.

So you're not going to address my questions?

[tentaku]

Obama is much smarter in handling media than what Trump is doing. Obama hired relatives of leaders of media networks to work in his administration. Seems like Trump refused to throw the media a bone, now they barking up on him 24/7.

[Heathen Hammer]

Obama is much smarter in handling media than what Trump is doing. Obama hired relatives of leaders of media networks to work in his administration. Seems like Trump refused to throw the media a bone, now they barking up on him 24/7.

Trump did an excellent job in terms of forcing mainstream corporate media to discredit and expose its own bias. Plus it is a fact, that lack of credibility of "free press" (which is pretty much propaganda outlet of political and financial elites) has been observed long before Trump was a politician, its just that thanks to other forms of communications provided by the Internet, false claims made by the media became easier to point out and expose.

[Big War Bird]

Yup, Trump says a lot of things and there often is a great deal of difference between what Trump says and what he does.

[Aexodus]

A distrust of the media by the populace is nothing new. Do you think this is something Trump created? Trump is a wake-up call to the media to stop lying like they have for years.

Since 1970-2015, media trust has dropped really quite dramatically. To 24% in newspapers, and 21% in television.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

People trust the President (who says untrue things yes) more than Congress, and more than the media.

Media is generally thought to be far more liberal than conservative in bias, with an uptick in ‘conservative’ from 2013 to 2014.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Katsumoto]

A distrust of the media by the populace is nothing new. Do you think this is something Trump created?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Just because trust in the media has fallen, doesn't mean Trump is justified in criticizing unfavourable coverage of him, or using the sort of dangerous language mentioned earlier. The media is facing certain issues, but it's not as though Trump is addressing them :

First, in many, but not all, of our countries, we see a growth of media partisanship. Instead of representing all parts of a community, news organisations increasingly take sides, run campaigns,
and drive agendas. In many cases these agendas are hidden, representing the interests of powerful political or commercial interests. To some extent this has always been true, but social and digital media has made this more apparent. This is no longer just played out on the opinion pages, but has started to bleed into the news itself. Our open-ended responses show these biases and agendas represent the biggest single reason for low media trust.

Second, many people no longer see the media as representing the interests of ordinary people, particularly the young and those on low incomes. Given fast-changing and increasingly multi-cultural societies, there is a problem of representation in newsrooms, in terms of age, gender, class, political outlook, and ethnic background. For many people, the news media is seen as part of the establishment elite, biased, or just out of touch.

Third, the changing economic models are seen as lowering journalistic standards. Intense competition for attention is changing the type of stories that are commissioned and the way headlines are written, misleading and confusing audiences. In television news, the drive for ratings, and the drive for clicks on the internet, is viewed as rewarding sensationalist, emotive, and partisan news. Accuracy is often a casualty as newsrooms strive to be first. Audiences have noted these changes and have drawn their own conclusions.

Fourth, the growth of the internet and the rise of social media has created a world in which multiple perspectives have become the norm. The sheer abundance of information can create confusion as much as clarity. On any story, people are routinely exposed to different opinions and alternative facts, whereas previously they might have stuck to a single source. This, in turn, has led people to question the integrity of news organisations that had previously been beyond reproach. Politicians and bloggers use social media to further question the motivations of journalists and news organisations – in a further cycle of mistrust.

Given the speed and scope of these changes, it is not surprising that trust in journalism has fallen overall. But it is worth noting that not everyone is complaining. Many respondents base their express trust in news on core professional principles and practices of sourcing, verification, and commitment to finding facts and reporting them. These values are clearly still important for many news users, even when people often feel journalists and news media fall short of them. Furthermore, digital and social media have provided a vast range of new perspectives, and the ability to communicate and discuss the news across the world. Many of our respondents are deeply sceptical about the news – mistrustful even – but they are also better informed and enjoy access to a much wider range of sources. Nobody in our open-ended responses said they wanted to go back to a world with a small number of sources. Perhaps falling trust is an inevitable consequence of the increased range and availability of news and the greater opportunities to participate. Perhaps we need to consider discounting some trust in favour of scepticism and a focus on news literacy.

Link (has bad word for title)

Trump is a wake-up call to the media to stop lying like they have for years.

I asked this earlier, but I'll ask you too. Do you have some proof that the media has been deliberately lying for years? I haven't found anything to indicate that myself. The public's falling trust in the media doesn't automatically mean the media has been untruthful, it's just that it's been perceived to, by some. I probably don't have to tell you that perception and reality don't always match up.