-By Warner Todd Huston
A new poll on newspapers and television news shows that Americans’ confidence in the news industry continues to erode in this era of mass communications, reaching a low not seen since 2007.
The Gallup polling firm finds that trust in newspapers has fallen to 23 percent. This is down from 25 percent in 2012 and 28 percent in 2011.
The previous low was recorded in 2007 when trust in newspapers reached 22 percent.
Trust in newspapers has undergone steady erosion since its 1979 high of 51 percent, Gallup reports.
Television news fares no better in the estimation of those polled by Gallup. Trust in TV news tied that of newspapers with 23 percent saying they trust TV news sources. This is down from a 1993 high of 46 percent–when Gallup first began asking about it.
Continue reading “
Public Trust in Newspapers Falls to New Lows”
In a recent interview, CBS Evening News host Scott Pelley said that he thinks that Fox News really doesn’t have very many viewers–underestimating the network’s actual ratings by about 90 percent.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe host, Joe Scarborough, is nearly apoplectic over the recent IRS admission that it used the power of its office to intimidate conservative groups throughout Obama’s presidency. Not necessarily because the IRS was acting so poorly, but because the scandal hurts his anti-gun argument.
MSNBC talker Toure thinks he has discovered a key security flaw in our nation’s policies and has suggested a solution. Poverty in the Muslim world, he says, is a key threat to U.S. security and to nullify that threat we should open the borders wide and let all Muslims come here to get jobs so that their poverty can be alleviated.
During a panel discussion on his May 6 broadcast of Hardball, MSNBC talking head Chris Matthews called Glenn Beck and the NRA “Hitlerian” for their arguments against Obama’s gun-ban plans but only minutes later scolded those same folks for calling people Nazis. 
Typical of when a Democrat is president, during a keynote monologue at the White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD), the President is spared from too many mean spirited barbs. In keeping with that tradition, TBS’ Conan O’Brien poked a lot of fun at Republicans and conservatives with a bit sharper stick than he used to poke Democrats.
The White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD) has been a mainstay Washington to-do for years. Lately, however, it has come under fire for turning Hollywood–literally. In the wake of the event, some outlets continued the bashing but most lavished attention on the dinner or at least lauded it as harmless fun.
MSNBC has been playing musical chairs with its on-air hosts and one move left talk show The Cycle without a steady co-host. Now that Salon senior political writer Steve Kornacki has been pegged to helm a new weekend morning show, MSNBC has announced that The Nation correspondent Ari Melber will take up Kornacki’s The Cycle co-hosting duties.
Former NBA great Earvin “Magic” Johnson has seen Obamacare and has pronounced it good. According to Johnson, “a lot” of CEOs at hospitals have told him that Obamacare “is working.” 
Always looking to find some reason to smear Fox News, the website Raw Story slammed the network for airing the name of a 16-year-old rape victim in a March 18 broadcast of America’s Newsroom. But in its zeal to slap Fox, the website neglected to note that other news outlets did the same thing.
Old NBC News hand Tom Brokaw made an appearance on MSNBC’s The Cycle on March 4 and criticized President Obama for campaigning too much instead of governing. Brokaw also castigated Obama for refusing to negotiate with Republicans over the budget impasse and the sequester cuts.
MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry must have thought she was getting “edgy” in a recent segment on her show when she turned to the topic of “race jokes.” But instead of Maury Povich or Jerry Springer she ended up with sanitized PCism and another prosaic, partisan attack on whites and conservatives–the latter the only subject MSNBC ever seems to discuss.
Once again MSNBC has accused the National Rifle Association of being racists. Now host Alex Wagner claimed that NRA chief Wayne LaPierre employed coded racism in a recent op ed he wrote.
MSNBC is still scheduling Sandra Fluke as a guest and on Friday’s NewsNation with Tamron Hall she essentially claimed that leukemia treatments and contraception coverage is pretty much the same thing in the eyes of those “religious employers” that want to use religious objections to deny “healthcare” coverage to employees.
Virginia Representative Jim Moran has taken PC, pop psychology to its logical extremes by claiming that “older white guys” are the “most insecure” part of American society . And where else but on MSNBC?
In a classic example of substituting opinion for facts, Buzzfeed reported that MSNBC’s recent ratings should “make Fox News nervous.” It seems the main reason Fox should be nervous is because its featured stars and its back bench correspondents are “weak” according to Buzzfeed Politics.
NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd feels that the crime at Sandy Hook school in Newton, Connecticut should give rise to a new “middle ground with the National Rifle Association,” meaning that more gun control is somehow in the middle.
According to the 
This news is certainly no surprise to anyone on the right, but a new Pew study finds that MSNBC is far more biased than Fox News.