As the Joker exclaims in Tim Burton’s Batman, “And now, folks, it’s time for ‘Who do you trust!’” Well, voters in Australia and America are telling pollsters who they trust.
Cue sad trombones for the legacy media.
One-third of people in the latest Guardian Essential survey believe there has been an overreaction to the threat of the coronavirus, and only 35% of the sample trust the media to give them honest and reliable information about the pandemic[…]
Government is currently faring better than media outlets on trust and reliability questions[…]56% of respondents say they trust the government to provide honest and objective information about the Covid-19 outbreak.
That means that a third more people trust the government than the media. Naturally, the Grauniad tries to spin the result.
While just over half the fortnightly sample expresses confidence in government, this means a substantial proportion of respondents lacks confidence in the information coming through official channels – which suggests containing the pandemic will be difficult if people don’t trust public health messaging.
The survey was in the field last week, before the dramatic and sometimes confusing developments over the weekend.
theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/24/guardian-essential-poll-one-third-say-there-has-been-an-overreaction-to-coronavirus
It was also before PM Morrison began holding daily and more pressers, where he has been blunt and clear – and frequently clashed with the media over their sensationalism and fear-mongering.
US President Donald Trump is even more savage with the media. Guess who’s winning?
Americans trust President Donald J. Trump more than they do the national media to provide accurate information about the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new poll from CBS News.
Though both are viewed as untrustworthy sources of information by a majority of Americans, the president has a narrow edge over the national media. Forty-four percent of Americans said they trust Trump to provide accurate information about the coronavirus, while 56 percent said they didn’t trust the president.
By comparison, just 43 percent of Americans trust the national media when it comes to the coronavirus, according to the poll. A slightly larger majority—57 percent—said they didn’t trust the media’s coverage of the pandemic[…]The same poll found that a majority of Americans—54 percent—were optimistic about the Trump administration’s ability to deal with the China-caused pandemic. A similar majority—53 percent—said President Trump was doing a good job of handling the coronavirus outbreak.
The poll findings are in line with other recent surveys that have confounded the national media. As it turns out, the American people view Trump’s handling of the pandemic far more positively than the media would prefer.
freebeacon.com/media/poll-trump-media-trust/
Not that you’d know that from reading CBS’s reporting of the survey. Nowhere does it mention any of the above. Instead, readers have to browse the attached PDF – which CBS quite obviously knows most won’t bother to do.
This is a particularly devastating result for the legacy media, given the traditionally low esteem in which politicians are usually held, as well as the media’s relentlessly ferocious attacks on the president.
More than ever, the legacy media’s preening self-image of themselves as the trusted gatekeepers of public information is ludicrously out of step with reality.
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