U.S. : Survey Finds ‘Surprisingly’ More People Believe News Misinformation

A recent sur­vey found that half of Amer­i­cans believe the nation­al news out­let tries to mis­lead, mis­in­form, or per­suade the pub­lic through its report­ing to adopt a par­tic­u­lar point of view.

The poll, released Wednes­day by Gallup and the Knight Foun­da­tion, sur­passed oth­er find­ings show­ing a lack of trust in the media, with the sur­pris­ing result that many believe it is intend­ed to be misleading.

When asked if they agreed with the state­ment that the nation­al press had no inten­tion of mis­lead­ing, 50% said they dis­agreed. Accord­ing to the sur­vey, only 25% agree.

Sim­i­lar­ly, 52% dis­agreed with the state­ment that nation­al news sta­tions “put the inter­ests of their read­ers, view­ers and lis­ten­ers first.” 23% of respon­dents believe jour­nal­ists act in the pub­lic interest.

“It was quite a sur­prise to us,” said Gallup con­sul­tant Sarah Fioloni. The results point to a deep dis­trust and ill-feel­ing that extends beyond the basics and process­es of journalism.

Accord­ing to the study, jour­nal­ists must go beyond trans­paren­cy and accu­ra­cy to show the impact of their report­ing on the public.

John Sands, Knight’s senior direc­tor of media and democ­ra­cy, said, “Amer­i­cans don’t seem to think nation­al news out­lets care about the over­all impact of their report­ing on soci­ety. ’ said.

As a lit­tle con­so­la­tion, Amer­i­cans trust local news more in both cases.

With more peo­ple get­ting the news instant­ly from their devices, faster news cycles, and more news sources, more Amer­i­cans know the news than ever before. You know.

Infor­ma­tion over­load, on the oth­er hand, seems to have had the oppo­site effect. The sur­vey found that 61% of Amer­i­cans thought these fac­tors made it hard­er to get infor­ma­tion, and 37% said it made it easier.

Like many oth­er stud­ies, Knight and Gallup found that Democ­rats trust the news more than Repub­li­cans. Over the past five years, dis­trust has increased, espe­cial­ly among inde­pen­dents. Over­all, 55% said cov­er­age was heav­i­ly polit­i­cal­ly biased, up from 45% in 2017.

Reflect­ing the finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties of some news out­lets and the declin­ing view­er­ship of tele­vi­sion news net­works, the sur­vey found that 32% of Amer­i­cans pay more atten­tion to local news than in 2020. It turned out that it decreased from 56% at the begin­ning. It is the begin­ning of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year and the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.

When asked how peo­ple get their news, 58% said the Inter­net, 31% said tele­vi­sion, 7% said radio, and 3% said print­ed news­pa­pers and magazines.

Accord­ing to the sur­vey, 88% of Gen Zers aged 18–25 get their news online.

Olive fruit says that Amer­i­cans are more like­ly to pay if they don’t think they have the resources or the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reach out to local news outlets.

Find­ings are based on a Gallup sur­vey of 5,593 Amer­i­cans ages 18 and old­er con­duct­ed between May 31 and July 21, 2022.

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