The moderators’ performance illustrated exactly why public trust in media has plummeted to almost zero.

Tweet

As America enters the electoral sprint toward November’s election, focus naturally intensifies on public opinion polls, and who’s up and who’s down.  

Even slight changes in candidates’ polling averages and shifting leads trigger hyperbolic headlines and pundit scrutiny.  Kamala Harris has predictably been the primary beneficiary of that media fanfare since she ascended to a slight lead, never mind that at this point in 2016 Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump by nearly 3% and in 2020 Joe Biden led Donald Trump by nearly 8%.  In the end, Trump obviously defeated Clinton and only lost to Biden by 43,000 votes in the states of Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.  

Amid the constant polling chatter, however, there’s a notable public opinion data point to highlight:  Americans’ nearly complete lack of trust in the mainstream media that plays such a role in our electoral process.  

This week’s presidential debate conducted by ABC News, whose very name almost constitutes market fraud by now, illustrates why that’s the case in new vivid relief.  

In terms of media trust, the most recent periodic polling from Gallup presents that public distrust in stark terms:  

The 32% of Americans who say they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to report the news in a full, fair and accurate way ties Gallup’s lowest historical reading, previously recorded in 2016.  Although trust in media currently matches the historical low, it was statistically similar in 2021 (36%) and 2022 (34%).  

Another 29% of U.S. adults have “not very much” trust, while a record-high 39% register “none at all.”  This nearly four in 10 Americans who completely lack confidence in the media is the highest on record by one percentage point.  It is 12 points higher than the 2016 reading, which came amid sharp criticism of the media from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump – making the current assessment of the media the grimmest in Gallup’s history.  (Emphasis added.)  

In a similar poll focusing more exclusively on television news and newspapers, which obviously includes ABC News, the numbers were even more grim:  

Americans’ confidence in two facets of the news media – newspapers and television news – has fallen to all-time low points.  Just 16% of U.S. adults now say that they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news.  Both readings are down five percentage points since last year.  Gallup has tracked Americans’ confidence in newspapers since 1973 and television news since 1993 as part of its annual polling about major institutions.  …  Although trust in media in the U.S. has been scarce for many years, confidence ratings for newspapers and TV news have never been as low as they are now.  Taken together, these data suggest that the media has a long way to go to win back the public’s confidence.  

ABC’s shameful performance during this week’s debate won’t advance that effort of winning back the public’s confidence.  

From the outset, the moderators failed to hold Harris to account for refusing to answer direct questions, including the opening question on American economic malaise.  And while an exhaustive list would be impracticable, they proceeded to insert themselves into the debate by bickering with Trump transparently on behalf of Harris.  

Among other falsities, Harris claimed that she explicitly promised in 2020 not to ban fracking, but in fact she had earlier unequivocally advocated a ban as a candidate, and her subsequent comment was simply that President Biden wouldn’t ban fracking.  Harris also falsely accused Trump of opposing in-vitro fertilization and supporting a nationwide abortion ban, and she repeated the thoroughly debunked falsehood that Trump labeled neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia “very fine people” although Trump had explicitly stated otherwise.  

Did the ABC moderators make any attempt to correct Harris’s falsities?  Of course not.  

The moderators also dubiously insisted that crime rates are declining, but the federal data on which they relied is distorted because it omitted several particularly violent cities.  Additionally, public polling shows crime rates much higher than official repots from law enforcement agencies, with that discrepancy partially explained by increasing reluctance to report crimes due to low confidence in police response, as well as the distinction between police decisions to arrest versus crimes actually committed.  

In any event, the moderators’ performance illustrated exactly why public trust in media has plummeted to almost zero.  

Our system of representative democracy cannot function effectively without a healthy, honest, objective media that exercises its First Amendment rights responsibility.  In the absence of a trustworthy media, we risk further descent into partisan polarization and bitterness, resembling Venezuela or Russia or China more than the longstanding American ideal.  The questions now are whether Americans will tolerate that continued deterioration, and whether someone within mainstream media leadership does the right thing by correcting course before it’s too late.