"CNN is the most politically polarizing media source."

May 9, 2023 1:49 PM

Trust in Media 2023: What news outlets do Americans trust most for information? A YouGov survey about 56 media outlets, of which Politico's Jack Shafer is not a big fan.
posted by box (44 comments total)

Is CNN the most polarizing, or are people most polarized about CNN? Not the same thing, especially when probably 99% of the people at the bottom of that distribution never, ever watch CNN.

Another interesting question would be, "how many mass shooters or terrorists have given [media outlet] an honourable mention in their manifestos?"
posted by klanawa at 2:41 PM on May 9, 2023 [16 favorites]

Folks should have a peek at Ground News for a bias exposure aggregate news model.
posted by CynicalKnight at 3:10 PM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Shafer seems to be offended that media outlets dare be evaluated without informed estimations. Which, on one hand, fair enough, but on the other, knowing how the great uninformed think of media outlets, even in their ignorance is still valuable. It shows the work which needs to be done to change an institution's reputation and the value of legacy trust. I think he is missing the point of the survey to make point of his own, people should trust professional evaluators of media like him over the vague senses they have of media they do not regularly consume. Which is getting into old man on his lawn, yelling at the sky territory in terms of its disconnect from reality.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 3:16 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

I think it’s interesting that they include Infowars, which has repeatedly denied in court that they are news. Of course, they also claim to be journalists, sometimes, when they think it will get them off the hook for damages.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:49 PM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Why don't people trust Al Jazeera? Is it the name alone, the funding source, or some other thing?
posted by fiercekitten at 4:32 PM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]

It's certainly a measure of how much of a lagging indicator trust is in media. The Wall Street Journal hasn't been trustworthy for years, and the public hasn't caught up yet.

The BBC hasn't been trustworthy on UK-topics since the run-up to Brexit, and the public hasn't caught up yet.
posted by tclark at 4:36 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

There’s a certain kind of multidimensionality to it - I wouldn’t consider CNN completely trustworthy on many subjects, but for completely different reasons than a FOX cultist wouldn’t.
posted by Artw at 4:41 PM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]

But then there are weird outliers, such as Democrats giving the conservative Daily Caller a higher trust score than their Republican kin do.

Okay that’s a WTF. Daily Caller is pure Nazi trash.
posted by Artw at 4:43 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Why don't people trust Al Jazeera?

Because most Americans heard of it during Gulf War 2? When they were already invested in an ideology that al Jazeera wasn't really on board with?
posted by Dr. Twist at 4:44 PM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]

Shafer seems to be offended that media outlets dare be evaluated without informed estimations.

Shafer's piece is pretty bad. He is rather explicitly confused about "trust" in media and "trustworthiness" of media, swapping out the two terms.

Republicans who hate the NYT and rate it low don't trust it. Not trusting a newspaper is a good reason not to read it! The poll captures that. Shafer is bothered that so many people are wrong and blaming the poll.

Reminded of an Onion headline, "38% of people not actual entitled to their opinion."

Okay that’s a WTF. Daily Caller is pure Nazi trash.

The above defense of the poll doesn't mean I think the poll is dominated by informed opinions. I would not be surprised if there's confusion between the Daily Caller and the Daily Beast among respondents only vaguely aware of either one.
posted by mark k at 5:25 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

YouGov surveys that rank things (e.g. brands) often ask respondents to first pick the ones they’re familiar with, and then ask them to rank only those. It sounds like that didn’t happen in this case, which probably has some survey-research good reason but maybe also led to some weird (e.g. Daily Caller) results.
posted by box at 5:31 PM on May 9, 2023

reason not to read it! The poll captures that. Shafer is bothered that so many people are wrong and blaming the poll.

There’s a thing with media types where they desperately want to inhabit an imagined center and are perpetually horrified at the thought that they might be alienate conservatives, whilst conservatives give no fucks, inhabit their bubble of unreality and discount anything outside of it regardless.
posted by Artw at 5:31 PM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]

I think the question of trust in media is more multivalent than a simple number. I have a digital subscription to the Toronto Star, basically the only newspaper in Canada that is not right of centre. I see every day the comments from people who have learned to ignore the red squiggles on their screen that every word published in it is absolute fabrication. Except for any story about a criminal case, in which case every allegation and accusation is true. Oh, and the sports scores are true as well.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:37 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Wall Street Journal hasn't been trustworthy for years, and the public hasn't caught up yet.

in a way that diverges from my at-least-fifteen-years-old assumption that WSJ opinion is straight wingnut, while WSJ news coverage is on par with other major papers, if positioned to the center-right?
posted by atoxyl at 6:47 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]

Why don't people trust Al Jazeera?
Probably because it sounds 'foreign'.
posted by dg at 7:11 PM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't any trust any network that puts Trump on it. Fuck CNN.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:40 PM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

Not sure what C-SPAN ever did to Republicans, besides show unedited footage of their representatives, and be named somewhat similarly to CNN. I mean, who doesn't love their call-in segments?
posted by credulous at 8:40 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

in a way that diverges from my at-least-fifteen-years-old assumption that WSJ opinion is straight wingnut, while WSJ news coverage is on par with other major papers, if positioned to the center-right?

I cancelled my subscription to the WSJ way back when Murdoch bought it, but they are still doing good reporting, including super high-profile take-down-rich-people like uncovering the Theranos fraud. Before that they did Merck / Vioxx reporting. Their current headlines are similar to the Post and the Times both in what they cover and the framing (Trump liable, debt ceiling looming, Clarence Thomas scandal ongoing, etc.)

If there's an argument that the news pages are untrustworthy I haven't heard it. The opinion pieces have been seriously whackadoodle since before Murdoch.
posted by mark k at 9:38 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Jordan Shanks doesn't trust Australia's mainstream media eloquently and at length.
posted by flabdablet at 2:02 AM on May 10, 2023

Vanity Fair seems trustworthy to me, where is it?
posted by waving at 2:48 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Dr. Twist: Because most Americans heard of it during Gulf War 2? When they were already invested in an ideology that al Jazeera wasn't really on board with?

I remember that few if any cable operators carried it and was dropped from most of the dish services as well after being labeled as the “terrorist news network” by the Fox set.
posted by dr_dank at 4:50 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

The BBC on the web looks like a bad version of The National Enquirer.
posted by DJZouke at 5:07 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

CNN is about halfway through a rebrand from a 90's/00's centrism that was just right of Hillary, but a ways left from Romney into a new "center" they are trying to stake out to the right of Joe Biden and just far enough from Mitch McConnell to ask "Is fascism really all that bad?" while being careful to stay out of its way.

They're putting on a Trump town hall tonight, just after he was held liable for sexual assault for Christ's sake.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:16 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

CNN's current move is pretending they haven't seen the Overton Window dragged way the hell to the right and finding a new pretend middle in an effort to chase ratings.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:25 AM on May 10, 2023

A Jazeera receives funding from the government of Qatar, so I kind of slot them in as potentially biased, in the same way that I see NPR as potentially biased to the status quo in the US, and the CBC as potentially biased to the status quo in Canada, which (to be clear) is not the same as thinking they are state media like RT. I also expect their reporting to be substantially anti-Israel and sometimes they slide into anti-semitism and then they usually apologize but it shows an editorial bias, which probably leaks out in ways I may not recognize, so I don't trust their reporting on Israel, while they recently had a thing about gun violence in the US that was very good. I've also read about high-profile journalists quitting them over bias allegations though I admit I haven't looked into it. I expect the facts they report to be broadly correct, but I would never rely on their reporting alone, especially about the Middle East, I'd always want to have a second source with a different bias. Given only the choices "trust/neither trust nor distrust/distrust" I would probably have listed them as "neither trust nor distrust."
posted by joannemerriam at 7:18 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'll echo the idea that there's more to how one reads the news than trusting or distrusting an outlet. The far right ones like the Washington Examiner and the Daily Caller I'm happy to ignore entirely, but the center-right ones like the Washington Post or The New York Times will tell the same untruths about the same issues enough to be reliable otherwise.
posted by jy4m at 12:59 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Well, Town Hall went as well as you would expect. Thank you CNN, at least you will get somewhere between zero and none FOX viewers to come over to you by doing this.
posted by Artw at 5:19 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

I wonder if CNN took out Dominion lawsuit insurance, or how many hours of training the moderator received in order to reduce the cost of said insurance.
posted by credulous at 5:23 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is some incredibly cowardly shit.

Oh, and they also ran this: Trump’s CNN town hall is a sign of a broader and more traditional campaign strategy

So fully tilting into The NY Times approach of pretending the guy is normal and nothing is wrong and he didn’t start a coup then just now basically say it should have succeeded.
posted by Artw at 5:26 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

"Biden Fundraising on Trump CNN Town Hall" is not something I had on my 2023 bingo card.
posted by credulous at 6:44 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Well, Town Hall went as well as you would expect

I really don't understand the mainstream media treating Trump like anything other than the Fascist threat that he is. He literally tried to overthrow the country with force only three years ago. I really just don't get why the media is playing with fire like this yet again, even after the famous Moonves marker point.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:52 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

It’s quite amazing. They put in way more effort trying to make it seem like this dude is normal and nothing is up than he ever does.
posted by Artw at 7:00 PM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

I used to read CNN semi-daily (in addition to several other news sources, of course), but after this bullshit softball TFG town hall I'm so disgusted with CNN that I won't be continuing with them any more.
posted by neon909 at 10:39 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Keith Olbermann, a Trump critic and former MSNBC host, said: “I think we can say Chris Licht’s conversion of CNN into a political and journalistic whorehouse is complete.”"
posted by neon909 at 10:55 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

The thing I don't get is that he — like any Fascist — is an existential threat to a "free press". But the CEOs are hellbent on delivering quarterly profit, even if that means there are no profits six or twelve months down the line when Immortan Don dictates that all media outlets are illegal but Newsmax. Is the business really that cutthroat that the execs just don't care about their own jobs or even their own lives, after November 2024? Trump voters have already made it perfectly clear they don't care about murdering people who get in their way.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:13 PM on May 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

They are all owned by very, very rich people and the one thing those people all have in common is they find democracy a hassle they would prefer didn’t exist/was at least minimized to make way for the whims of very, very rich people.
posted by Artw at 8:58 AM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, it's incredible that CNN would not just give him a stage, but work hard to make sure the audience was on Trump's side. They cheered for him, laughed at all his jokes and tried to humiliate CNN's own moderator.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 10:56 AM on May 11, 2023

Stealing this from the E. Jean Carroll thread:

Parker Molloy: The head of CNN thinks it's journalism's job to 'make news.' That's a problem.
posted by Artw at 11:25 AM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

The thing I don't get is that he — like any Fascist — is an existential threat to a "free press". But the CEOs are hellbent on delivering quarterly profit, even if that means there are no profits six or twelve months down the line when Immortan Don dictates that all media outlets are illegal but Newsmax. Is the business really that cutthroat that the execs just don't care about their own jobs or even their own lives, after November 2024? Trump voters have already made it perfectly clear they don't care about murdering people who get in their way.

Frankenstein always thinks he can control his monster.
posted by non canadian guy at 3:47 PM on May 11, 2023

but work hard to make sure the audience was on Trump's side.

Did they?
posted by Ahmad Khani at 3:56 PM on May 11, 2023

From cnn.com: "will feature the former president taking questions from New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the 2024 GOP presidential primary."
posted by the_dreamwriter at 8:08 PM on May 11, 2023

Thanks for that. I also read that they weren't permitted to boo, either, or express disagreement. Ugh.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 10:38 AM on May 12, 2023

The next Trump town hall meeting should be in Boston or NYC or LA or San Francisco or Chicago or...
posted by DJZouke at 11:54 AM on May 12, 2023

CNN now apparently has Chad Wolf on and is deeply into the immigration scare as their new main plotline.
posted by Artw at 12:00 PM on May 12, 2023