-By Warner Todd Huston
Recent polling of likely voters by the Rasmussen polling firm finds that trust in government is at a low ebb with nearly half of voters feeling that the Justice Department’s seizure of reporters’ phone records and the IRS targeting of conservatives are serious scandals. Yet the media is still not widely trusted.
“The United States was founded on a belief that governments are created to protect certain unalienable rights,” Rasmussen reports. “Today, however, more voters than ever view the federal government as a threat to those rights.”
According to Rasmussen, 42 percent of respondents felt that the DOJ was trying to bully the press with its snooping on personal and business phone calls while only 38 percent felt the DOJ was simply trying to stop security leaks.
Meanwhile, 68 percent still feel that freedom of the press is “very important.”
Ominously, only 30 percent feel that the federal government is a protector of individual rights. The poll found that 56% feel that the federal government is a threat to individual rights. This is up ten points since Rasmussen’s December poll.
As to the IRS scandal, Respondents overwhelmingly felt that the IRS attacks on Tea Party and conservative groups was politically motivated. 57 percent feel the actions of the IRS was based on ideology while only 16 percent feel it wasn’t. 26 percent were unsure. Further, 55 percent feel that Obama knew all about the IRS attacks despite his claim that he somehow just found out when the news broke in the media.
But the media is still not fully trusted by the American people.
When Rasmussen asked, “In the U.S. today is the balance too much in favor of freedom of the press or too much in favor of national security,” the results were decidedly mixed.
- 28 percent say the balance is too much in favor of the press
- 32 percent say it’s too much in favor of national security
- 25 percent say it’s just right.
- 14 percent say they are not sure
“Voters don’t trust political leaders, but they are not sure they trust the media, either, so there are really no good players in this from a lot of people’s perspective,” Rasmussen said.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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