Poll: Faith In Media Hits Record Low

A new Gallup poll shows that six years of the Obama Administration has taken as tough a toll on the news media as it has the Obama Administration. Just as the non-stop incompetence and neverending bad judgment of the White House has driven Obama’s poll numbers down to record lows, so too has that failure driven down to record lows the poll numbers of the president’s media cheerleaders. 

According to Gallup’s annual survey of numerous American institutions, the number of people who say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot of faith” in newspapers sits at 22%, which ties a record low set in 2007. 

Television news is in even worse shape. Just last year, 23% of those surveyed had faith in television news. In a single year, that number has plummeted to just 18%, a new low. The previous record low was 21% in 2007. 

There is no questioning the fact that the fate of the news media is directly tied to the fate of President Obama. It was the news media that made Obama a rising star in 2004, made him a phenomenon in 2008, and assured Americans again in 2012 that he deserved a second term.

The media invested all of its credibility and spent all of its trust to make Obama president and to ensure he kept that job after his reelection campaign. Now that it is obvious to anyone but the most partisan that Barack Obama will go down in history as a failed, if not disastrous president, the American people have not only lost faith in this president but also in the institution that reassured them time and again that an untested, inexperienced radical should be trusted with their future.

Another irony, as NewsBusters points out, is that in this same poll, those institutions the news media regularly smears and attempts to undermine enjoy much higher approval with the American people. 

In contrast, Gallup found much higher levels of public confidence in institutions that are often criticized by the press: the military (74%), small business (62%), the police (53%), and the church or organized religion (45%).

Out of the 17 institutions listed in the poll, television and Internet news ranked 15th and 16th. The only institution that polled worse was Congress with 7%.