A recent Gallup poll has just confirmed what most Americans have known, or at least suspected, about America’s mainstream media over the past couple of years.
The news media have lost credibility at an alarming rate, and confidence that the news is being impartially reported has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history.
Only 29 percent of Americans have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media—down four percentage points from last year.
Here is the question put to a random sample of 1,020 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia:
“In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media—such as newspapers, TV, and radio—when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly—a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?”
Gallup has been asking this question since 1972. It is interesting to note that in 1976, fully 72 percent of Americans trusted the news media to present news in an unbiased and accurate manner.
So what is going on? Why the 43-point plunge in the past 49 years?
The answer is simple.
America’s news media have moved consistently to the left of center and now see themselves as exponents and defenders of political agendas that reflect liberal or socialist viewpoints.
Just look at how the legacy media cover President Trump. A recent study by a journalism watchdog group found that 93 percent of the coverage of the president is negative. No matter what he does or says, the media has decided Trump must be opposed.
Trump himself has said that if he were to find a cure for cancer, the media and their Democrat masters would complain that he should have done it sooner.
Reporters today have much more leeway to insert their political beliefs and shared values into news stories. There are fewer editors and producers in newsrooms who demand at least a semblance of balance and fairness in the stories reporters turn in.
Too many journalists see themselves as advocates for specific societal dogmas and attitudes that they identify with or support rather than as objective witnesses.
Okay, here is where I get to sound like an old fogey journalist from the green eyeshade era.
Actually, I am proud of that appellation. Because when I entered the world of journalism right out of college back in 1970 as a general assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune, the concept of objectivity was not considered a quaint, outdated notion impossible to attain, and therefore could be ignored.
You couldn’t get away with inserting your political or social beliefs into any story that you turned into the Tribune’s City Desk. If you did, a cranky old school City Editor by the name of Don Agrella would yell at you and chuck the story back at you.
“You can’t write that kind of biased crap in the Tribune,” he would bellow. “Leave your opinions at home. Our readers don’t give a damn what you think. ”
It only took one or two tongue-lashings like that, and any notion you had of incorporating your political perspective or your attitudes about social issues in a news story quickly receded.
Where are the Don Agrellas today? Sadly, they are few and far between, and the result is a world in which reporters feel they have a right and duty to inflict their predominantly liberal and socialist opinions on readers, viewers, and listeners.
It is not just what is inserted into a news story that can make it unfair and unbalanced. Often, it is what is left out—the bias of omission.
For example, I recently heard a National Public Radio report on how Republicans are conflicted about Trump’s domestic policies—specifically the rounding up, arrest, and deportation of illegal and criminal migrants. Several Republicans were interviewed, and almost all said they were not supportive of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs & Border Protection (CBP) polices regarding illegal immigrants.
How convenient. However, if I were to go out onto the street today and stop 50 Republicans, I bet you I would have trouble finding more than one or two who think Trump’s policies on illegal migrants and criminals and the work ICE and CBP are doing to deport them is bad. To produce a report that leaves listeners with the impression that Republicans have suddenly switched en masse to Socialist Democrats is clearly dishonest or, at the very least, an attempt to push a leftist agenda.
Since the 2024 presidential election, that agenda has been on display day after day in the mainstream media. You can be sure that if there is just a hint of a negative story about Donald Trump, it will be the lead story on NBC, CBS, or ABC—not to mention CNN and MSNBC, both of which have lost all credibility in their fawning support of Democrats and their socialist policies.
Meanwhile, Trump and the almost 80 million people who voted for him are viewed as Hitlerian sycophants and political troglodytes by most of the legacy media. Trump himself is regarded as a dictator, judging from the media’s obsequious coverage of the recent “No Kings” demonstrations.
And who can forget 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s labeling of Trump supporters as racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, and Islamophobes. Her comment that half of Trump’s supporters are in a basket of “deplorables” represents one of the greatest gaffes in American electoral history.
Naturally, the mainstream media did its best to sweep Clinton’s “deplorables” comment under the rug.
“She walked that back,” one CNN news anchor declared at the time. “But you have to admit a lot of Trump supporters fit the categories Hillary Clinton mentioned.”
Really? Which supporters? And what about the Democratic Party? Are there no “deplorables” in it? I suspect there are plenty. How about that party’s embrace of assassination culture?
A Rutgers University poll and study found that fully 55 percent of Democrats say it would be okay to assassinate President Trump, while 48 percent said the same about Elon Musk.
Another recent poll found that almost 60 percent of Democrats are okay with mobs doxxing and physically attacking ICE and CBP officers who are only enforcing immigration laws passed by Congress.
Am I surprised? Not a bit. After all, the Democratic Party in the 1850s supported the nullification of federal law, which eventually led to the Civil War.
Sound familiar? It should. It’s all we hear from Democrat Governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’s JB Pritzker when it comes to enforcing federal immigration laws. That goes for socialist and communist mayors like L.A.’s Karen Bass, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, Boston’s Michelle Wu, and the radical Muslim Zohran Mamdani, who is likely to be New York City’s new Mayor in less than a week.
Nullification of federal law is the new Democratic Party tactic. If you don’t like a federal law, refuse to obey it.
Should we be surprised by this scheme? Absolutely not. After all, the Democratic Party is the party that supported slavery, created Jim Crow laws, which spawned the Ku Klux Klan, and condoned lynching and segregation in the South. It was the Democratic Party that opposed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, as well as the 14th and 15th amendments that gave legal rights to African Americans, as well as the right to vote.
Has the Democratic Party ever apologized for its long history of bigotry and racism? Answer: No.
Have the corrupt legacy media ever apologized for covering up Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical decline, for hiding the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop, for its relentless attacks on Donald Trump—before and after his 2024 election?
No. Instead, via an allegedly trustworthy watchdog organization like the Society of Professional Journalists, the legacy media continues to congratulate itself for what it considers “honest journalism.”
In fact, as we have seen by the low esteem in which the public holds journalists today, the media in 2025 are anything but honest and trustworthy.
It’s sad to see the steady demise of an occupation I once felt honored and privileged to be part of, because too many journalists today believe it is more important to advocate for a position or political narrative than to practice professional, responsible, non-partisan journalism.
I am sad to say it, but I feel fortunate that I am no longer associated with a once-honorable profession that is increasingly overseen by a network of unethical propagandists rather than unbiased, professional journalists.
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