'News' Media Figures Still Don't Understand Why They're So Widely and Deeply Distrusted

Two clips from this week, each illustrating the same lesson: Much of the so-called 'news' media in the United States cannot or will not grapple with why their credibility has taken a nosedive in recent years. And yes, it's been a serious nosedive. Here is some of the Gallup data that gets discussed in the CNN exchange below. From the polling firm's February 2025 findings, only three out of ten Americans say they place either a "great deal" or even a "fair amount" of trust in mass media. By contrast, one-third say they put "not very much" stock in the media's trustworthiness. A plurality -- 36 percent -- rate their level of faith in the press as "none at all." The simple and damning math is that 69 percent of the public has either little or zero confidence that the media is telling them the truth.

Unfortunately, this abysmal assessment has been well earned over years of hard, alienating, trust-destroying work by journalists:

GALLUP: Americans’ trust in the mass media is at its lowest point in more than five decades. pic.twitter.com/EBwH7h3Nd2
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 27, 2025

Why has this happened? The overarching reason, in my mind, is bias. The 'news' media is full of partisan and ideological actors who cosplay as down-the-middle and objective journalists -- when in fact they routinely put thumbs or fists on the scale to slant coverage toward their preferred narratives or outcomes. The American people see it clearly, so the subsequent indignant denials come off as even more gaslighting, which in turn pushes public faith even lower. They're biased and they're lying to us about it. People don't like being their intelligence being insulted, which the media does unapologetically and frequently.

In the month of April alone, I've written about how the media is finally and scandalously belatedly telling the truth about former President Biden's decline, which they and their fellow Democrats actively covered up and obscured for political reasons throughout most of the 2024 campaign season. I observed how Democrats have been asked so few questions about this egregious breach of trust that when a prominent Senator was challenged about it, she fell apart. We've highlighted multiple examples of the 'news' media rushing to push false or aggressively biased stories, on behalf of an agenda, on illegal immigration and deportations. There was another instance of a CNN anchor butchering the same issue, spreading outright misinformation on the air. We drew attention to yet another example of the CBS Newsroom seeming to be dominated by cartoonishly woke leftists. Those are merely the instances I have personally had time to write about this month, which isn't even over yet.

But the aforementioned CNN host, who wrongly told her audience that entering the US illegally isn't a crime, has an interesting theory on why her industry's credibility is in the toilet. Here, she agrees with commentator Scott Jennings that there's a problem, then promptly blames...conservatives:

Phillip: We do have that Gallup polling here about trust in media, and...
Jennings: It's terrible!
Phillip: Now, and in recent years. And let's be honest, Scott, a lot of this is driven by rhetoric on your side of the aisle.
Jennings: I'm sorry, you think it's driven by [our] rhetoric, and not the performance?
Phillip: Absolutely.

They cannot fix this problem. They can't deny it anymore, but they're so wedded to the fiction that they're unbiased that they're blaming the people against whom they're biased for a huge majority of the public noticing said howling bias. Chef's kiss. Again, it's unfixable. Even MSNBC personalities are being given reality checks on this from Hollywood actors (Wilson actually understates the distrust problem and polling data in his set-up):

🚨NEW: "The Office" Co-Star Rainn Wilson refutes MSNBC Host Stephanie Ruhle for blaming Trump and @elonmusk for why faith in media has PLUNGED🚨

WILSON: "I would push back: when I see this kind of insight and passion being directed at the current administration and the lack of… pic.twitter.com/X9coaOMoGU
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) April 22, 2025

I'll leave you with this clip. For context, the CNN journo in it is the same guy who recently yukked it up with a disgraced and deranged former New York Times and Washington Post journo about the murder of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson -- and who brazenly and falsely asserted on-air that no there is no left-wing equivalent to the Right's political violence in America: