Mainstream media are even losing young Democrats
On Monday, Gallup reported on the continuing decline of trust in mainstream media.
For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.
Megan Brenan, “Americans’ Trust in Media Remains at Trend Low,” October 14, 2024
Image Credit: Brian - It’s the background that matters here:
Gallup first asked this question in 1972 and has measured it in most years since 1997. In three readings in the 1970s, trust ranged from 68% to 72%, yet by Gallup’s next readings in the late 1990s and early 2000s, smaller majorities of 51% to 55% trusted the news media. The latest findings are from a poll conducted Sept. 3-15, which includes Gallup’s annual update on trust in the media and other civic and political entities in the U.S. ”Trend Low,”
Now, trust is heavily skewed in terms of partisanship, in that “54% of Democrats, 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.” This political skew is consistent with the fact that media are heavily biased toward Democrats. But under the circumstances, we should ask why only 54% of Democrats trust them!
What about young Democrats?
Perhaps a more significant finding is that “Young Democrats trust the media far less than older Democrats do: 31% of Democrats aged 18 to 29 versus 74% of those aged 65 and older have a great deal or fair amount of confidence.” That gap provides a much more informative clue as to reasons for loss of trust.
Do we need mainstream media any more?
Before the internet got started, mainstream media built its reputation on providing general information. If you wanted to know about the big hotel fire downtown, the frost warning, or who won the big game by how much, that’s where you went. That free basic information was, of course, supported by advertisers — cars, rooms for rent, groceries. Today, we all go to the internet for all that stuff.
The left-wing bias of mainstream media may feel comfortable to many people but it’s apparently not enough to sustain the industry. Thus 2024 got off to a brutal start with mass layoffs and futile strikes at storied media.
Politico predicts, “Publications for readers who depend on market-moving news like you find in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and other business titles will endure. So will the aforementioned New York Times, which provides news that moves political markets and has established itself as a national voice worth paying for. So, too, will the gossip and lifestyle magazines remain, as will publications like the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker, which serve, boutique-style, a loyal, educated readership.”
Maybe. But this year, the Democratic National Convention pointedly prioritized independent content creators over mainstream media journalists to get its election year message out. That seems to signal that, even there, there is no turning back.
You may also wish to read: As trust in media declines, media seek allies in government. The internet crashes the cost of almost every factor except time so more and more independent sources are jumping in. Legacy media want something DONE about the new bottom-up news media that are an existential threat to traditional top-down media.
