Reuters

U.S. Finishes Dead Last for Media Trust Among 46 Countries, and Fox News Lies About It

Posted by on June 30, 2021 at 12:36 pm. 1 Comments :

The state of the media suffered “bigly” during the years that Donald Trump occupied the White House. He hated the concept of free press, repeatedly calling it “the enemy of the people,” and berating and insulting reporters. It was his mission to sow discord. And it was one of the few things that he was good at. At least with regard to his worshipful cult followers.

Fox News, Bullshit Factory

Trump actually admitted to Leslie Stahl that he purposefully foments distrust of the media. She asked him why he attacks the press. “You know why I do it?” he replied. “I do it to discredit you all, and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

Mission accomplished! A new report by the Reuters Institute ranked media trust among 46 countries. The United States came in dead last:

“The United States ranks last in media trust — at 29% — among 92,000 news consumers surveyed in 46 countries. […] One explanation, though not necessarily the only one, is the extreme political polarization in the U.S. This study, like many others, found extremely high levels of distrust — 75% of those who identify as being on the right thought coverage of their views is unfair.”

So it was the deliberate slander of the press by Trump and his conservative mouthpieces at Fox News and elsewhere that produced this humiliating result for the U.S. And no one should be surprised to learn that it’s still going on. Fox News contributor Joe Concha wrote an op-ed for The Hill that brazenly misrepresented the Reuters study:

“The U.S. media is the least trustworthy in the world, according to a comprehensive new Reuters Institute survey encompassing 46 countries. Yes, you read that right. The country with among the most resources in this arena – human, technical and otherwise – finished dead last. Finland ranked the highest, with a 65 percent trust rating. In Kenya, the trust rating clocked in at 61 percent. But here in the U.S.A., the home of global media giants including the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN, we’re trusted by a whopping 29 percent of those reading and watching.’

Notice what Concha left out? The primary cause of distrust in the media, his employer Fox News. Concha’s article went on to cite stories about Trump’s collusion with Russia an example of why the media isn’t trusted. He falsely claimed that “the Mueller Report didn’t find proof” when it actually did. Concha also maligned CNN and MSNBC reporters, saying that “they’re patently partisan opinion hosts” who “share their feelings, their opinions” and that they “pass it off as objective news reporting.” Which, of course, is what Fox News does 24/7, and what Concha is doing in this op-ed.

Digging deeper into the Reuters study confirms that Fox News is the main offender. When the survey results were broken down by media brand, Fox News had the distinction of being the most distrusted at 46% and only 35% trusted. That coincides with Trump’s most zealous base of support. Meanwhile, the most frequent media targets of Trump’s animus (NBC/MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post) all placed higher than Fox by 8 to 11 points.

Fox News, Reuters, Media Brands

The fact that Fox News would so flagrantly misrepresent this information is typical of their dishonesty and bias. This week Fox also misrepresented the ratings for cable news networks. They reported on the ratings decline of CNN and MSNBC, attributing it, without evidence, to a “credibility problem.” But for some reason Fox’s article never mentioned Fox News ratings at all, or the fact that they had declines that were just as bad and, more often than not, worse.

So in less than a week Fox News blatantly lied twice (at least) about how they are received in the media marketplace. And they are doing it deliberately with the intention to deceive. Which is no less than what should be expected of a “news” network that lies about everything else all day, every day. That’s just how Fox News rolls.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

POLL: Half of Republicans are Psycho Trump Cultists Who Believe Capitol Riots Were ‘Peaceful’

Posted by on April 5, 2021 at 11:20 am. 8 Comments :

On January 6, 2021, hundreds of hostile right-wing extremists invaded the United States Congress in an attempt to violently obstruct the constitutionally mandated certification of the 2020 presidential election. They were sent by their faux messiah, Donald Trump, who insisted that the election was “stolen” in a fearmongering and reckless rant, saying that “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Donald Trump Rally, Sieg Heil

Three months later a poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos has documented what common sense had already confirmed: That the glassy-eyed disciples of the Cult of Trump are a bastion of delusional cretins who are willingly deceived and certifiably insane:

“Since the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have pushed false and misleading accounts to downplay the event that left five dead and scores of others wounded. His supporters appear to have listened. […]”

“[A]bout half of Republicans believe the siege was largely a non-violent protest or was the handiwork of left-wing activists ‘trying to make Trump look bad,’ a new Reuters/Ipsos poll has found. Six in 10 Republicans also believe the false claim put out by Trump that November’s presidential election ‘was stolen’ from him due to widespread voter fraud.”

Seriously? Half of Republicans, who presumably saw the videos of hundreds of StormTrumpers assaulting the seat of American democracy, climbing walls, busting down doors, breaking windows, vandalizing property, chanting death threats, and physically attacking (and killing) police officers, now believe the violent insurrection was “mostly peaceful”? What kind of brain damage is present for that conclusion to even be considered in passing?

There’s a reason that so much mass hysteria could be evident in this group of Trumpian criminals. They were lied to by both Trump and a deliberately dishonest propaganda disseminator posing as a “news” network: Fox News. Virtually every mention of the attack on Fox News excused Trump and included allusions to the mythical Antifa as the “real” perpetrators of the violence. Never mind that there was no evidence of that whatsoever and, of course, there was abundant video of what actually happened. There was, however, evidence of Trump’s collusion and planning of the Capitol melee.

For his part, Trump repeatedly incited this aberrant behavior by his cult followers, telling them just prior to the attack that “The Radical Left will destroy our Country if we let them.” During the assault Trump confessed his affection for the mob saying that “We love you.” And more recently, Trump visited with Laura Ingraham of Fox News for a bit of flagrant gaslighting wherein he claimed that “Right from the start it was zero threat [and all] hugging and kissing”

See? it was a Love-In! And except for the dead, and more than a hundred injured police officers, and the destruction of property, and the defiling of a democratic institution, it was celebratory occasion that Trump’s Klan will long recall with pride.

Fortunately, the Reuters poll also found that 59% of all Americans hold trump responsible. And eight in 10 Democrats and six in 10 independents “reject the false claims that the Capitol siege was ‘mostly peaceful’ or it was staged by left-wing protestors.” Nevertheless, the psychotically delusional beliefs of the GOP and the Trumpsters is a worrisome trend. And we must remain vigilant to prevent future episodes of violence and rightist mob offensives. No doubt Trump and Fox News are already plotting them.

NOTE: Twitter recently suspended the News Corpse account after 11 years without giving a reason. So if anyone wants to tweet articles from my website, please feel free to do so often and repeatedly. Also, Be sure to visit and follow News Corpse on Instagram. Thanks for your support.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Reuters Editor Warns That Covering Trump’s America Is Like Covering China, Russia

Posted by on February 1, 2017 at 6:04 pm. 4 Comments :

The increasing hostility toward the press from Donald Trump and his staff has resulted in a deteriorating relationship. Not that it was ever particularly healthy. Trump spent most of his campaign insulting reporters and demonizing the media in general. It got so bad that the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a warning that “A Trump presidency would represent a threat to press freedom in the United States.” The National Press Club released a similar statement condemning Trump’s anti-press tactics as “unacceptable and dangerous to our democracy.”

Donald Trump

Since the election things have not improved. Trump is still maligning mainstream news organizations as “fake news” and punishing reporters that he regards as insufficiently adoring. His press secretary, Sean Spicer, has upended the White House briefing by adding fringe “news” outlets. He is reportedly considering granting press credentials to Infowar’s Alex Jones, a notorious conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter. Meanwhile, the Trump press team has revoked press credentials for the Washington Post and other legitimate news enterprises. What’s more, they have refused to provide spokespeople to CNN for several weeks in an attempt to isolate them.

In this environment, Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler wrote a memo to his reporters to guide them on how to cover Trump. The memo begins by describing the current conditions that the media face:

“The first 12 days of the Trump presidency (yes, that’s all it’s been!) have been memorable for all – and especially challenging for us in the news business. It’s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” or that his chief strategist dubs the media “the opposition party.” It’s hardly surprising that the air is thick with questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration.”

Indeed, Trump has led an unprecedented assault on the free press. His attacks have been severe and personal. And in every case he is flailing wildly without offering much in the way of a rebuttal. He is only concerned with any negative impression of him, and that results in a furious temper tantrum. Adler’s approach to this behavior is to remind his reporters that they have experienced similar challenges in the past. And he provides examples to make his point:

“I am perpetually proud of our work in places such as Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia, nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our journalists.”

So the secret to covering Trump is to apply the experience gained from covering dictators in regimes that have little respect for a free press. His advice is to be prepared for legal harassment and physical threats. Both of those are tactics that Trump has already deployed. He has said that he wants to “open up our libel laws” so that he can sue the media. And on at least one occasion a reporter required secret service protection following a Trump rally due to overt threats.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

It’s fair to assume that the Trump administration will continue to foment discord with the media. Trump’s “malignant narcissism” and tendency to bully others is not likely change any time soon. Hopefully the media will have the courage and integrity to stand up to whatever is thrown at them. They are the last line of defense against the kind of tyranny that Adler warns about in his memo.