"Real Time" host Bill Maher sparred with comedian Seth MacFarlane over the trustworthiness of the mainstream media.
MacFarlane, a woke Left-wing Hollywood elite, argued that Americans can trust the media to deliver the news in its proper form without bias. Maher said that news organizations "print the narrative," not the "truth."
The pair discussed the dangers social media poses to society. MacFarlane began by criticizing the comments sections on news sites, such as The New York Times, where the reader's impression of an article is "radicalized one way or the other."
A transcript of their dispute follows:
"It's like this reporter took the time to research this, to fact-check it, oversight from an editor," MacFarlane said. "And if they got it wrong, then they have to print the retraction."
"Or it's just slanted," Maher chimed in. "What if it was just slanted? What if it was not wrong? It's just slanted. That's what somebody's pointing out in the [comments]."
"Then write to the editor!" MacFarlane exclaimed. "Do your research, and formulate your argument."
"But that appears a week later," Maher fired back. "By then, I would've forgotten it, or I don't see it."
"You seem to trust journalists more than I do," Maher said. "I trust certain journalists, yeah," MacFarlane responded.
"Everything I read, whatever source, it's only half the truth. They print the narrative. They don't print truth."
"That's a generalization, though, isn't it?" MacFarlane followed.
"Well, it is because it's generally true," Maher said. "They print the side of the story that-"
As the segment continued, MacFarlane claimed former President Donald Trump wants people not to trust the media and journalists. Maher, however, pushed back, saying: "Hitler was a vegetarian. That doesn't mean I like Donald Trump. They print the half that they want that is gonna make people like you who are partisan, very partisan, you want to read something that 'Oh, that makes me feel good.'"
According to an October poll by Gallup, Americans' trust in media plummeted to a historic low.
The poll found that only 32 percent of people have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence that the media reports the news in a full, fair, and accurate way— the only other time in recent history that trust has fallen so low was in 2016.
Meanwhile, a record-high number of Americans, 39 percent, say they don't trust the media at all.