USAWatchdog.com
August 23, 2010
Recently, a new Gallup poll delivered some bad news to mainstream media–only one fourth of people asked believe what it says. The Gallup story said,“Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news – with no more than 25% of Americans saying they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in either.” (Click here for the complete Gallup story.)
This is not a recent trend according to Gallup and other polls done on this subject. Last summer, comedian Jon Stewart of the “Daily Show” was “Most Trusted” newscaster. I wrote about this in a piece I did last year called “The Soft Truth.” I said, “He had almost as many votes as Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams combined. Katie Couric, according to the Time Magazine poll, came in dead last. Boy, if that is a not a wake-up call to mainstream media, I do not know what is. . . . Doing superficial event type news programming is something I call “The Soft Truth.” It is more or less superficial news and is cheap, fast to produce, and you will not make enemies. The news in mainstream media has mostly become just the stuff between the commercials. Then, there is what I call “The Hard Truth.” This story is not cheap, it ties up the company lawyers and management and, if done right, you will piss some people off. And even if there are cutbacks because of advertising shortfalls, you can still ask hard questions.” (Click here for the complete soft truth story for September of 09.)
