A new global media poll said that just 38 percent of Americans trust the mainstream press, near the lowest level in the world.
But the desire for news about President Trump, the so-called media “Trump Bump,” is turning into a money-maker for the industry.
In the new Reuters Institute and Oxford University report titled “Bias, Bullshit and Lies: Audience Perspectives on Low Trust in the Media,” Trump was given credit for reviving an industry that he regularly rips as “fake,” especially the big outlets like CNN.
“In terms of online news subscriptions, we have seen a very substantial ‘Trump bump’ in the U.S. (from 9 to 16 percent) along with a tripling of news donations. Most of those new payments have come from the young – a powerful corrective to the idea that young people are not prepared to pay for online media, let alone news,” said the report.
It cited the big winners:
“We have seen a significant increase in the United States in the wake of the Trump victory where overall payment (including one-off payments and donations) has risen to 16 percent, with ongoing digital subscriptions running at half that (8 percent). These findings are consistent with figures released by news organisations, which show a significant Trump bump. The New York Times added around 500,000 digital subscribers in the six months since the election and the Wall Street Journal has added around 200,000 members. Our data show much of this growth has come from those on the left and the young – effectively showing support for the media’s efforts to hold the president and his policies to account.”
Overall, the report found that some have a different attitude on the media, with 38 percent saying they avoid the news, answering yes to it “can have a negative effect on my mood.”
The survey provided to Secrets looked at media consumption in 36 nations, and found U.S. trust in news 28th, at just 38 percent.
“Looking at political orientation in the U.S., we can see that the people on the left are more likely than people on the right to avoid news because it has a negative effect on their mood or because they feel that there is not anything they can do about it. However, people on the right in the U.S. are more likely to avoid news because they find it not reliable: 62 percent of news avoiders on the right cited this as a reason, while only 18 percent of people on the left did so. This could be connected to the narrative that the mainstream media have a ‘liberal agenda,’” it said.
To back that up, it found that most news sources in the U.S. are to the left of center, unlike in most all other countries.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
