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Gallup Poll Shows Most Americans Share Trump's Lack of Trust in Honesty of Media

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One important public service President Donald Trump has performed for the American people has been to pull the veneer back and fully expose the incredible bias of the establishment media.

Only 28 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup last month rated the honesty and ethical standards of journalists as either “very high” or “high.”

Contrast that with police officers, who earned a combined 52 percent rating in those categories, down just 2 percentage points from 2019, despite the massive “defund the police” protests nationwide.

Not surprisingly amid the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses (at 89 percent), medical doctors (at 77 percent, up 12 percentage points from ’19) and pharmacists (at 71 percent) all came in near the top of the 2020 list of the most trusted professions.

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The party breakdown was stark when it came to rating journalists. Just 5 percent of Republicans put journalists in the “very high” or “high” category regarding honesty and ethical standards, compared to 48 percent of Democrats.

The same divide is seen regarding police officers, with 79 percent of Republicans putting them in the highest categories of trust, while for Democrats it was only 36 percent.

Gallup interviewed 1,018 adults between Dec. 1 and 17, and the results had a margin of error of plus- or minus-4 percentage points.

Do you trust the establishment media to report the news fairly?

The findings regarding journalists were consistent with a poll Gallup released in September, which determined only 9 percent of Americans trust mass media a “great deal” and 31 percent a “fair amount.”

Gallup noted that until the mid-2000s, a majority of Americans said they trusted the media.

When the polling organization started asking the question in the 1970s, the combined trust rating ranged between 68 to 72 percent and stayed fairly close to that until the late 1990s.

When I was coming of age politically back in the 1980s, many of us knew outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and ABC News had an anti-Reagan (really anti-Republican) bent, but it sure didn’t seem as blatant then as it is now.

In probably many instances, we just didn’t know what we didn’t know.

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The advent of social media and the blogosphere in the 2000s began to change all this, allowing everyday Americans to fact check the media and hold them to account.

The most recent example of blatant bias came with the quashing of the Hunter Biden story by Big Tech and much of the establishment media.

Really, the bias has been on display for all to see during Trump’s entire time in office and before. The president is right on the money when he says, “fake news is the enemy of the people.”

I’m all for upholding the First Amendment, but fake news does erode the people’s trust in the media and thereby weakens the so-called Fourth Estate’s vital role in keeping us all well-informed in our democratic republic.

How can the Fourth Estate hold the government accountable if we cannot trust what journalists are reporting?

Even before Trump took office in January 2017, media outlets like CNN were pushing the unverified, now discredited “dossier” to prove that the then-president-elect was a Manchurian candidate or at the very least comprised by the Russians.

The was the same dossier bought and paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Think of all the major news stories that have dominated Trump’s presidency: Russiagate, impeachment, the economy, the Islamic State group, the wall, the COVID-19 response.

Trump was right and many in the establishment media were wrong.

There was no collusion. There was no “quid pro quo” with Ukraine. The economy did boom and quickly recover thanks to the Trump administration’s policies of low taxes and decreased regulations.

The Trump-led military did decimate the Islamic State group by following a different tactic than the Obama administration. The new wall greatly reduced the number of illegal border crossings.

And finally, as promised, a COVID-19 vaccine was authorized and being distributed to Americans by the end of 2020.

With the media having gotten all that wrong, and Trump having gotten it right, I’m inclined to believe him when he says there has been massive voter fraud that changed the outcome in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and perhaps Arizona.

The anomalies alone are enough to raise red flags. How did Joe Biden received 81 million votes, but have no coattails?

The Republicans gained seats in the House of Representatives.

Why did Rust Belt swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which happen to have Democratic governors, go for Joe Biden, while Trump handily won Ohio and Iowa?

The Rust Belt swing states have similar demographics and almost always swing together, as they did for Barack Obama in ’08 and ’12 and Trump in ’16.

The Wall Street Journal reported that all but one of the 19 bellwether counties nationwide that have accurately predicted the results of every presidential election since 1980 went for Trump this year.

That, and many other anomalies, suggest fraud to me, but most journalists are unsurprisingly incurious.

The American people have judged correctly: The establishment media does not deserve their trust unless and until journalists reform their ways and report the news fairly and accurately.

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Randy DeSoto has written more than 2,000 articles for The Western Journal since he joined the company in 2015. He is a graduate of West Point and Regent University School of Law. He is the author of the book "We Hold These Truths" and screenwriter of the political documentary "I Want Your Money."
Randy DeSoto is the senior staff writer for The Western Journal. He wrote and was the assistant producer of the documentary film "I Want Your Money" about the perils of Big Government, comparing the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Randy is the author of the book "We Hold These Truths," which addresses how leaders have appealed to beliefs found in the Declaration of Independence at defining moments in our nation's history. He has been published in several political sites and newspapers.

Randy graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with a BS in political science and Regent University School of Law with a juris doctorate.
Birthplace
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Nationality
American
Honors/Awards
Graduated dean's list from West Point
Education
United States Military Academy at West Point, Regent University School of Law
Books Written
We Hold These Truths
Professional Memberships
Virginia and Pennsylvania state bars
Location
Phoenix, Arizona
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Politics, Entertainment, Faith




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