Media Bias

Now, let's take a look at people's perceptions of bias in the media. Well, who do you trust more? President Trump or the media? Well, that's a tough question, because both the media and the President have very low levels of trust. So, I think we're going to have to maybe throw out some interesting questions and rate them separately from now on. But only 44% trust President Trump over the media, and 56% trust the media more than President Trump. A clear win, if you compare the two for the media. How do you think the media has treated Trump so far? 57% say fairly, and 44% say unfairly. Again, a win for the media over President Trump. They look at the strident language, I think, coming from the President about the media, and while he's got substantial numbers of people, around 44%, siding with him, a majority on the side of the media.And I think a big reason why is exactly this question, do you think President Trump is helping or hurting his reelection case with his tweets? 74% hurting, 26% helping. Do you think President Trump should continue to tweet or stop tweeting? 69% stop, 31% continue. We started to ask this about two months ago, and it's one of the few issues in which Democrats and Republicans and voters across the board agree. So, the President may be getting a tremendous value out of communicating through Twitter and his tweets, but in many respects, the way that they're positioned and the way they come off has backfired against him, and is seen as a critical element of why Americans are concerned about the way he runs the Presidency and what his character and values are.Now, let's break this apart into some interesting agree, disagree statements. There's a lot of fake news on social media. Well, virtually everyone agrees with that. 84%. Sometimes it's hard to know what news to believe online. That's over 80. Sometimes it's hard to know what news to believe in the mainstream media. That's 74. There's a lot of fake news in the mainstream media. That is 67. So, when you break out the mainstream media, don't contrast it with President Trump. The mainstream media's rating are quite low here. Many journalists intentionally post fake news or false information on social media. 59%. Now, once you get to many of my friends post fake news, that drops to 16% strongly, and a total of 50%, still a high number, giving the journalists benefit of the doubt accidentally is a lower number, and talking about the friends intentionally posting fake news is a lower number. Truth is there's overall concern about the news that's in social media, and there's concern that even the information coming from the mainstream media is often fake or exaggerated based on what we see in these questions.

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