Gallup (7/18/22) released the results of two poll questions last month that purported to measure the public’s confidence in the “news media.” The results showed only 11% and 16% of Americans with “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in television news and newspapers, respectively.
These results were enough to inspire columnist Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post (7/26/22) to produce another one of his disingenuous rants against the “mainstream media” (Washington Post, 1/6/22). “Why do people believe the ‘Big Lie’?” he asks. Answer: “Because Americans don’t trust the media.” He argues that because the media have lost public confidence, they are the reason that roughly one-third of Americans overall, including two-thirds of Republicans, believe the Big Lie—that the 2020 presidential election was stolen (Atlantic, 4/18/22).
Marc Thiessen (Washington Post, 7/26/22), writing on the media role in the widespread (among Republicans) belief that the 2020 election was stolen, fails to utter the words “Fox News,” where he himself is a regular contributor.
As he writes:
Millions watched this biased coverage [of Trump’s presidency], and the animus toward Trump and his supporters, and began to tune out mainstream news coverage. So, in January 2021—the very moment our country needed to separate fact from fiction—there was no neutral arbiter of truth that a majority of Americans trusted.
Blaming the mainstream media for people believing the Big Lie is almost as preposterous as the Big Lie itself.
This does not mean that the mainstream media do not deserve careful scrutiny and criticism for their corporate bias and censorship, which FAIR has been providing since 1986. But that is not what Thiessen has described.
Trust in some ‘media’
It is true that most Americans say they distrust the “media.” A recent Pew Research study (8/31/20), published in August 2020, confirmed that Americans are highly skeptical of the news media as an industry, that views of the “media” are sharply partisan, and that Americans understand little about the process of news production.
But Pew has also examined public attitudes toward specific news sources, and in that context finds that most people trust some media news, if not all. Pew researchers Lee Rainie and Katerina Eva Matsa (Pew Research, 1/5/22) recorded a video in which they discuss these results:
We asked, “Do you trust the news media?” And a lot of people answered “no” to that question. But then, to unpack that idea…Americans are equally comfortable sort of saying, “Yes, I really like, and I really trust, some sources but not others.” And so, in a way, their trust has become disaggregated and divided.
People have lots of news sources that they trust, but they don’t think the institution of the news media and the industry of news organizations as a whole are trustworthy.
Evidence that most people do trust “lots of [specific] news sources,” if not “the media” more generally, is provided by a 2020 Pew poll that “unpacked” the public’s views of the news media (1/24/20). It asked respondents to indicate which of 30 news outlets they trusted, and which of those they distrusted.
According to the findings, clear majorities of Democrats trust CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS, and a large majority of Republicans trust Fox. Viewership, like trust, is concentrated on Fox by Republicans, while viewership among Democrats is spread among several television networks.
These findings reveal that while there is no one news outlet that garners the trust of a majority of Americans, the vast majority of Americans do have at least one news source they trust.
Too much trust in ‘media’?
Back to Thiessen’s question: Why do people believe in the Big Lie? Is it really because they don’t trust the media?
Actually, the more logical conclusion, based on Pew’s findings, is that people believe that the election was stolen because they do trust the media—that is, the specific news sources they use.
When Thiessen refers to “people” believing the Big Lie, he glosses over poll reports that show most of those “people” are Republicans (PRRI, 5/12/21), and most of the Republicans trust and pay attention to Fox, which is a doggedly determined purveyor and arguably a co-creator of the election hoax (Los Angeles Times, 1/19/21) . Former Fox political editor Chris Stirewalt accuses Fox of being the “biggest promoter of the Big Lie,” saying that “the network gave voice, repeatedly, to people putting forward the preposterous notion that the election had been stolen” (ABC, 7/30/21)
The biggest consumers of Fox—Republicans—overwhelmingly believe what the network is flacking. A Poll by PRRI showed that 66% of Republicans agree with the statement, “The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,” compared with 27% of independents and 4% of Democrats.
And among Republicans who watch Fox, 86% believe the election was stolen, compared with roughly half that number (44%) among Republicans who watch more traditional news. These results suggest that Republicans who watch Fox mostly trust what they hear on that network—that Trump won the election.
Beyond media
Still, as the chart shows, even among Republicans who use mainstream news sources, close to half believe the election hoax. That could be due, in part, to the fact that PRRI includes local TV news viewers among “mainstream” viewers. And the largest owner of local TV stations is the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is an unabashed supporter of Donald Trump (Vox, 4/3/18), and also a purveyor of the Big Lie (Media Matters, 1/28/21)
But there must be something more than simply right-wing media as the purveyors of lies. And that “something more” is obvious: Donald Trump.
He dominates the Republican Party, demanding that its current and would-be leaders profess fealty to his bogus claim of a stolen election if they want his support. Republicans in the House were so terrified of his wrath, they removed Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership position because she refused to accept the lie that the election was stolen from Trump (NPR, 5/12/21)
538 (7/18/22): “Since the 2020 election, millions of Republican voters have accepted former President Donald Trump’s false claim that the presidential election was stolen from him.”
FiveThirtyEight (9/8/21) reported that last year, state Republican leaders demagoguing the notion of fraudulent votes passed a record number of voting restrictions, “the policy byproduct of former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.”
And this year, with only half the Republican primary season over, FiveThirtyEight (7/18/22) reports “definitively that at least 120 election deniers have won their party’s nomination and will be on the ballot in the fall.”
All these developments are legitimate news stories, which are covered by mainstream news media as well as the right-wing media. Many rank-and-file Republicans who see all these party leaders and candidates espousing the myth of the stolen election are no doubt persuaded that there is some truth to the claims.
Given Trump’s role in fomenting the election hoax, widespread acceptance of the hoax among Republican leaders, and the right-wing media’s role in helping to propagate it, blaming only the mainstream media for why most Republicans believe the Big Lie is, as I noted at the beginning of this article, preposterous—in fact, almost as preposterous as the Big Lie itself.
Of course, the mainstream media are not blameless. As reported here (FAIR.org, 1/18/21), they have long engaged in “bothsiderism,” an addiction to a false balance in reporting even on the January 6 insurrection. But that is not Thiessen’s argument. He wants us to believe that the mainstream media alone, because they have lost trust mostly among Republicans, is responsible for belief in the stolen election.
Even Thiessen himself appears not to believe his own words. What is the tell that reveals his duplicity? Never once in his two pieces for the Washington Post (7/26/22, 1/6/22), in which he makes his argument against “the media,” does he even acknowledge the lies about the 2020 presidential election spewing from Fox network and other right wing media. Nor does he acknowledge that Fox lists him as a “Fox News contributor” (6/28/18). Deliberately omitting such salient facts betray what he is really doing: acting as a shill for a corrupt network.
ACTION ALERT: Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @PostOpinions. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.
Great analysis, David, to bore down into the real facts and the bogus reporting by Thiessen. Thanks for all the polling statistics, which tell the real story of just who is bamboozling and who is being bamboozled about the Big Lie.
Like Thiessen, this author has a tell that expresses itself in his constant repetition furthering the rhetoric that the capitalization of words make for a lie bigger than the grotesque series passing for the 2020 Dem primaries (“Bernie Sanders Plunges to First Place”, FAIR Feb 24, 2020, et al), implying that the machinery of that party would never stoop so low.
As an independent, I haven’t trusted MSM (including Fox) since the runup to the Iraq invasion. FAIR usually does a good job of picking apart the propaganda, but not from the big picture perspective, as this article demonstrates.
Certainly, Fox and OANN viewers are more likely to believe the Big Lie election hoax, but even viewers like me (rarely view any at all) have tuned out the big conglomerates based on a history of “Big Lies” dating to the aluminum tubes, anthrax attacks, Russiagate, and takedown(s) of Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton. We also know that the NYT and WaPo are and have long been infiltrated by the “intelligence” services in what was – before Obama’s reversal – illegal propaganda directed inward at the American people.
So yeah, maybe it has been primarily Fox News driving the distrust among its viewers for the rest of corporate media, but I’m willing to bet there are many people like myself who’ve tuned all of it out after having been lied to again and again, always in favor of imperialism, globalism, finance capitalism and against the working class. And I’m also willing to bet that many, if not most regular readers of FAIR share my sentiments.
#FREEJULIANASSANGE
Tom_Q_Collins where do you go to stay informed about the world? What websites, newspapers journals or magazines do you read to stay up on current events, both political and polemical?
You are a frequent commenter on FAIR, hope you don’t mind being asked this.
(People are so distrusting of each other these days…what part of our collective malaise, pessimism, and cynicism is our unfree press to account for?)
In what ways is the press in the USA or here in the UK “unfree”? Its shackles seem in many respects to be self-imposed by its unwillingness to challenge capitalism and imperialism. Perhaps the need to please corporate advertisers is equal to the innate desire of editors and journalists to appeal to the lowest common denominator and not rock any political boats. That appears to be the situation in my country.
Hello and thank you for the reply. Here’s my daily list of reading (insofar as I am able with other things going on like work):
Consortium News – General anti-imperialism reporting including contemporary investigative journalism and analysis on things like the NATO-Russia conflict, Julian Assange’s status, and the like.
FAIR and Pro Publica – Objective media criticism and activism
The Intercept – Only for the stuff about pollution and crime/punishment (never for their co-opted foreign policy reporting/analysis)
Moon of Alabama – Dissenting analysis of geopolitics and the war in Ukraine (usually ignoring the reporting the author does on domestic US issues unrelated to foreign policy)
Counterpunch – I visit once weekly to pick up on a more all-encompassing variety of news that slips through the (intentional) cracks in MSM reporting
Mintpressnews – For information on Israel-Palestine from the Palestinian perspective and the occasional piece blowing the official narrative cover for things like 9/11 and US/UK intelligence services activities
Drudge Report – For a doom scroll of aggregated stories across the board (usually from a Republican/conservative angle, not usually pro-Trump or conspiratorial though)
My local newspapers and television stations
Occasionally I like to check on on MAGA-land through various sites like Daily Caller and OAN, just to keep my finger on the pulse since most of my neighbors are Trumpers
Scheerpost – Thoughtful analysis of various issues including geopolitics, the pandemic and many other topics, mostly all from well respected guest authors and journalists
CNN, NYT, Guardian, The Independent and NPR for the converse reasons I check Drudge and the right-leaning sites, and for general mindless news with low expectations of anything groundbreaking, the understanding going in that they write from the perspective of the center establishment and will lie in service to the US/UK MIC and intelligence agencies when needed
Gray Zone – More anti-imperialism and debunking of western media myths re: Syria, Israel, Afghanistan, Venezuela, etc.
Various blogs such as Craig Murray’s (excellent coverage of Assange’s show trial), Gilbert Doctorow (Russia expert), Yasha Levine’s Substack, Matt Taibbi (stay away from comments!), and Glenn Greenwald (same comment policy!) although I find both of the latter two much less interesting than a decade ago
Sometimes I check the Chinese state media and other sites that track with it
Naked Capitalism and Wall Street on Parade, usually for criticism of the FIRE sector, but also verging into politics and geopolitics rather frequently
Strategic Culture, and The Saker for occasional (sometimes biased, but in the other direction from what we see in the MSM) analysis on US/NATO policies on Russia and China
For leftist fare I sometimes check out Monthly Review Online (MROnline), Jacobin, Black Agenda Report, Popular Resistance, The Baffler, and other even more obscure sites that they may link to
And finally, the usual economics/geopolitics/foreign policy sites like The Economist, Foreign Policy, and the like.
There are many more. I really do try to balance my lefty philosophies and anti-imperialist/anti-colonialist tendencies with opposing viewpoints. I will add more if I think of – or visit – any over the next 48 hours.
How about you? I’m always looking for suggestions.
Took me a while to reply, but thank you Rebecca (fair enough it may not be truly “unfree” but limited by its own shackles) and thanks Tom_Q_Collins….
Here are a few good sources and sites I peruse from time to time:
FAIR
Black Agenda Report
Current Affairs Magazine
Daily Kos
Alternet
Truthout
Public Citizen
Truthdig
World Socialist Website
Democracy Now!
…and a few of the ones you’ve listed.
Thank you for the reply y’all…you’ve both exceeded my wildest expectations
– peace IDK
All the light we do not see.
I trust FAIR’s skepticism, the intent and thrust of this Theissen critique. Get my news from DemocracyNow!, The MSNBC Mehdi Hasan Show, the NYT, WaPo, 3quarksdaily.com, Regional and local reporting, assorted scrolling.
There is so much more we do not ever see and review, committed outside our reach. Its interesting to see what trends, what captures momentum and attention, the desperate attempts to harness a response to atrocities, assaults on Democracy, on the USA, kleptocrats, conmen. I see Q as a nascent impulse for control of the uncontrollable.
The internet has taken over essential social and cultural functions, and has moved within the individual, to operate in conscious and unconscious ways.
Overall, we are 100x more informed than the average Joe 100 years ago.
From far away in our capitalist world (USA-Europe) these statistics were quite something new to learn. Our european media, say, in Germany “non private” ARD/ZDF TV stations paint a picture which is quite wrong. So if I started a poll here all people with no in-depth knowledge about US media would be extremely surprised to learn that Republican/leaning Republican voters inform themselves by watching ABC, 33%. We here thought ABC 0-2%, Fox 95%. We are not very good informed about how conservative CBS or NBC are. The US media world here is presented like CNN (always good) and Fox (always Trump).
It would be interesting to learn how many Republican voters at all watch CNN. Would that be 0-5%, or something – I have no clue – between 15 and 25%?
***
Concerning the big lie, and slightly leaving the topic of your article: you’d find nearly no medium in Sweden or Germany where the big Trump-lie would find anything else than disgust. (But you would have seen, by 2017, a lot of people here who were against TTIP for years. But after Clinton lost and Trump won, a lot of media suddenly were “for” TTIP :) – simply because Trump seemed to be against it. What times…The green party of Germany started this in 2017 – “as Trump is against TTIP we cannot be against it”.)
So – the picture about the Big lie is clear here. Where things blur, is, say, Liz Cheney. From self-declared “leftist” papers like Taz from Berlin (in fact today and since more than 15 years a pro-new-arms-race, market-radical paper with rich/ very rich readers pretending to be still progressive) to our old conservative papers like FAZ or ZEIT or now Der Spiegel – all hype Liz Cheney. Precisely like all from former-Left to very conservative suddenly hyped George W.Bush after the Trump-victory. Same in Sweden.
So you can clearly see a lot of problems, in Germany or Sweden, too. There is a near 100/0 bias here, on both sides. Just that here in Europe no Fox news exists, up to now.
We got our yellow press, but german BILD, horrible as it ever was and is, lost ground, and is still no Fox news, even if there are topics which are reported similar (say the big hate against refugees in 2015, and more).
The swedish yellow press, “Aftonbladet”, even has a left-socialdemocrat history. (slightly fading away, as Sweden is quite a market-radical country today. Sometimes it seems as if many, especially younger voters in Sweden had an “allergy against the social welfare state”. So Sweden has very poor people too today, often immigrants, but what Sanders and others praised is no more, since quite some years.)
This is a timely rejoinder to my comment from a couple of days ago. And a recommendation for FAIR readers looking for alternatives to corporate Big Lie media.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/23/the-instinctive-distrust-of-big-media/
You guys are amazing. All this critical reporting and not a peep about the biggest elephant in the room for the past 2+ years. Unpack the real Covid story behind the mRNA shots and tell us about the crazy excess mortality being recorded but ignored by the media.
Come on FAIR, it’s not a good look.
Do you know what FAIR’s budget and staffing level are? I’m sure they’ll be on top of it once everything has come out, and come out it will.
I’m in agreement with you on the mRNA vaccines – insofar as how they were rushed out and monopoly power handed over to a couple of very well connected companies, but FAIR has done plenty of work exposing the workings of Big Rx insofar as mass media is concerned. Maybe if we had Medicare for All or another form of universal health care, those same firms wouldn’t have the powers they do to foist unproven technologies in the form of novel mRNA vaccines on us? Now, I’m sure you’re going to say the exact opposite, but when you do, I challenge you to look at other countries with UHC and tell me how many of them, as a percentage, used mRNA vs. traditional vaccine technologies. That should be fun.
Few people trust the media. Few people understand how the editing process works. The media blames this on the ingnorat viewing. Now that is the way to regain trust. Then they cite the Big lie. What is the big lie? The idea that the election was stolen. Like that has never been said before. Once again the media treats the people like fools. We were just put through 3 years of a bigger more obsurd lie by the media and the Democrats that Russia the all most God like Putin and Russsia from 2000 miles away got into Unhackable election machines and stole the 2016 election. I wonder why no one trusts these liars.