The Necropolitan Sentinel

Gee, I wonder if they’ve figured out they’re being a little too obvious about it?

Yeah, probably not. They have “3 layers of editors” after all.

Gallup has the goods:

Now there are those out there that say, much like voter fraud, there’s really no bias in the media, they’re professionals.

Well, we may call them that, but that doesn’t make them professionals.

More importantly, much like voter fraud and a myriad other things, it ignores human nature.

What there’s been in the past, for the most part, is plausible deniability. It just wasn’t obvious or if it was, it was arguable. Now?

Well now it is really hardly arguable anymore. Treatment of recent events brings that into startling focus. Yesterday on QandO Facebook, we linked to an article that listed 6 plausible headlines if Obama was a Republican president.

And yes, they’re quite plausible. In fact, I think that it is almost inarguable.

As interesting as the first graph above is, the second it telling in another way:

How is it telling? Well, who is the most satisfied demographic? 18 points higher than the average in the above of those who are a great deal or fairly satisfied with the media. And, as expected, at least if you follow the news media at all, the GOP is horribly dissatisfied. In fact 84% have little or no trust in the media.

But that’s not the important story in that graph. It’s the slide of the independent voter from a postion of trust to one of distrust. A 21% drop from 2001 to now.

It is that demographic’s distrust that best tells the story. They really have no dog in the hunt in terms of strong ideology. Their claim is they vote the candidate that best represents them at the time. So if anyone’s view is less tainted by ideology or concern, it would be independents. And they’ve shown a marked downward trend in trust for the media.

The point? Well the point may be that the media’s best biased efforts may not pay off quite as well as they hope or they’ve enjoyed in the past.

One of the reasons is there are a multitude of other sources out there that are readily available and help point out the half-truths and spin that is seen quite often in media reports these days. It also says, at least to me, that such sources are being both sought out and believed (if the independent number has any validity at all).

Gallup concludes:

On a broad level, Americans’ high level of distrust in the media poses a challenge to democracy and to creating a fully engaged citizenry. Media sources must clearly do more to earn the trust of Americans, the majority of whom see the media as biased one way or the other. At the same time, there is an opportunity for others outside the “mass media” to serve as information sources that Americans do trust.

That’s precisely what is happening. The media monopoly has gone the way of feudalism. The digital printing press has seen to that. The problem is, the media, for all their self-lauding and claims of being “professionals” haven’t yet caught on to the fact that they’re fast becoming the equivalent of the buggy whip in an automotive society.

And it’s their fault.

~McQ

Twitter: McQandO

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