Voters fear the media far more than Russian hackers when it comes to tampering with election results.
According to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll, 46 percent of likely voters believe the news media is “the primary threat that might try to change the election results.”
The national political establishment was the second most-suspected group at 21 percent, and another 13 percent were undecided.
Foreign interests, including “Russian hackers,” ranked fourth with 10 percent and “local political bosses” came in last with 9 percent of likely voters as the main threat to truthful election results.
The poll results found 51 percent of likely voters were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about the possibility of violence erupting on election day or afterwards.
The poll of 1,000 likely voters was taken between Oct. 20 and Oct. 24 and followed the release of private emails by the hacking group WikiLeaks that revealed cozy relationships between some prominent media stars and the Clinton campaign. The WikiLeaks dump also discovered Donna Brazile, the interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, forwarded a debate question to Clinton that was later asked at a CNN Democratic town hall. Brazile at the time was a CNN contributor.
The poll found 39 percent of likely voters believe the media is coordinating coverage with individual political campaigns, while 48 percent said the media is reporting “completely of its own accord.”
The Gallup Poll has found trust in the media to have sunk to an historic low. A September Gallup survey found just 32 percent of American adults saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media,” a number that has dropped eight percentage points from last year.
