A new survey from Public Policy Polling shows that Fox News is the least trusted news network in the nation.

This is the second annual poll on news network trust. Last year had Fox at a higher level overall, but the poll’s internals showed that this was the result of the monolithic fanaticism of committed Fox viewers.

The same dynamic was present this year with PPP noting that “Democrats trust everything but Fox. Republicans don’t trust anything but Fox.” Democrats trust for Fox was at 22%. Their trust for all other sources fell between 56% and 73%. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans trusted Fox with no other source breaking 30%. Last year this led me to say:

What these numbers tell us is how effectively Fox has programmed their viewers to salivate when the bell rings. For these people, Fox is their remote brain. Consequently they will only respond to Fox and will shun any other source.

It’s still true today. Fox News is, not surprisingly, distrusted by a majority of Democrats (65%) and liberals (82%). But it is also distrusted by a majority of Independents (52%) and moderates (60%). The only groups who place their confidence in Fox are conservatives and Republicans. This is an affirmation of all those who recognize that Fox is nothing more than a right-wing PR firm for the GOP and their interests.

The American people are clearly paying attention and responding rationally to the fraud that Fox News represents. The question now is when will the media wake up and wipe the glaze from their eyes. There is no reason for them to continue to regard Fox News as their peers. They need to start treating Fox as they would any other disreputable propaganda organ.

They need not envy Fox’s ratings because they are just the result of Fox having corralled a big chunk of a niche demographic. By validating Fox they are assigning it credibility it does not deserve and hurting their ability to compete. When you have the president of MSNBC praising Fox CEO Roger Ailes as a role model, there is something seriously wrong with your perspective. Not being a news network, Fox is no more competition for news than is Nickelodeon (which I’ve said before is a better source than Fox for news and plays to a smarter audience). And it’s time the media realized this and acted accordingly.