“On the Holmes Front,” with Frank Holmes
To paraphrase Mark Twain, “Suppose you were a journalist, and suppose you were a liar. But I repeat myself.”
A new poll shows that most Americans couldn’t agree more.
A majority of Americans believe major media outlets churn out stories that are “false or gross exaggerations” in order to support a “political position”—and its driven trust in the media to an all-time low.
And to add insult to injury, the story was reported by a left-wing news outlet.
The liberal website Axios exclusively published the results of the poll taken by an international communications firm called Edelman group—and it rocked reporters around the globe.
A hefty majority of Americans—56 percent—believe that “journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”
Even more, 58 percent, believe that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.”
Edelman’s annual “trust barometer” found the lowest level of trust for the media in its 20-year history: For the first time, less than half of all Americans say they believe the media.
Only 46 percent of citizens surveyed say they can believe what they read, hear, or watch from the major, corporate media—and there’s a major political difference here.
After the election, 57 percent of Democrats said they trust the media—but only 18 percent of Republicans.
That’s hardly surprising, since more than 90 percent of the mainstream media’s coverage of Donald Trump has been negative, from before he was elected to this day, even after he’s out of office.
As terrible as these ratings are, they’re actually higher than other surveys.
The Gallup poll has found public trust in the media hovering in the 40s for a long time—and it’s dropping.
Last September, the Gallup/Knight Foundation released a poll that found 86 percent of Americans say the media are politically biased.
Less than one in five Americans even believe journalists are trying to do their jobs. They’re way overpowered by 74 percent of Americans who say reporters are actually “trying to persuade people to adopt a certain viewpoint.”
Most Americans say that media bias is “intentional,” because “the reporter is misrepresenting the facts (52%) or making them up entirely (28%).”
Nine percent even believe the media “are trying to ruin the country” with their lies.
They say they see lots of political bias in the media they’re watching—but two out of three Americans are really worried about the biased media their fellow voters are watching.
Journalists may consider themselves the source of all knowledge, but the American people aren’t stupid: They know when someone’s trying to gaslight them.
How could trust in the media be any higher after four years of promising they were about to find the “smoking gun” in the Russian collusion scandal—that “the walls are closing in” around Donald Trump?
How about lies that began the moment Trump entered the Oval Office, when Time magazine claimed Trump ordered that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. be removed?
Or claims that the Obama administration never wiretapped Trump’s offices?
Or phony stories that Donald Trump overfed Japanese fish so much that they died?
There were so many lies, errors, and deceptions that one journalist compiled a list of 132 media lies—eight months ago, before the presidential campaign really kicked off.
What about ignoring eight stories—from Trump producing the best economy in modern history, to the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop—any single one of which the Media Research Center found would have changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election?
The media’s four-year bout of yellow journalism was so bad that even Axios couldn’t spin this to blame President Trump.
“These numbers are echoed across the rest of the world,” Axios admitted. “They’re mostly not a function of Donald Trump’s war on ‘fake news.’”
What did they expect? When you spend every day saying Donald Trump is a racist who works for Vladimir Putin, then you ask Joe Biden softball questions about his favorite flavor of ice cream, people think you have an axe to grind.
What’s surprising is that so many Americans still trust the Fake News media.
With a radical president—and vice president—who want to radically transform America, an informed populace is more important than ever. The mainstream media may try to pull the wool over your eyes, but we will spend the rest of 2021 earning your trust. You have our guarantee that The Horn will always tell it like it is—true, fast, and unafraid.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”