By Theodora Koulouvaris
February 10, 2022
In 2018, he called the news media the “true Enemy of the People.”
“There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news,” wrote then President Donald Trump on Twitter. “The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly.”
These comments came after a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Congregation, a Pittsburg synagogue, in October of 2018 and a man mailed pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
It’s no secret that Trump detested the media, particularly the “mainstream media” and its criticism of him, throughout his presidency, frequently labeling news organizations he didn’t agree with as “fake news.”
But those words have real world consequences.
According to a Gallup poll from October of last year, just 36% of Americans said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the press. When it comes to individual partisanship, only 11% of Republicans said they strongly trusted the media compared to 68% of Democrats and 31% of Independents.
And while Republicans generally have a negative view of the press and its impact on society, Trump supporters tend to have an even harsher perception of the media.
In an August 2020 study from the Pew Research Center, 39% of Republicans who strongly approved of the job Trump was doing as president were less likely to expect accurate information from news outlets.
The role of the press is to provide viewers, readers, and listeners with accurate, objective information on a multitude of events, including political ones. But the erosion of media trust spells disaster for democracy. People give legitimacy toinstitutions in the U.S., including the media. Our democracy cannot survive if Americans don’t believe news outlets provide them with reliable information.
But what news sources do Americans trust in the first place?
According to a Pew Research Center survey from October 2019, 16% of Americans said Fox News served as their main source of political and election related news while 12% viewed CNN as the source of that same information.
Partisanship, however, plays a key role in determining whether viewers are tuning in to watch Tucker Carlson on Fox or CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
In that same study, 93% of those surveyed who claimed Fox News was their main source of information identified as Republican or Republican leaners while 79% of respondents who received their news from CNN identified as Democrats or leaning Democrats.
Both networks differ in their coverage of national issues. For example, Fox News and CNN reported on the Jan. 6 insurrection, when a mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
In the hours after the attack, Fox News personality Laura Ingraham claimed that the individuals who stormed the Capitol were not all Trump supporters, and some may have been members of the left-wing, anti-fascist group Antifa.
“Earlier today, the Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement,” Ingraham said. “Now, they were likely not all Trump supporters, and there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd. We will have more on that later.”
There is no evidence to suggest that members of Antifa were involved in the Capitol attack, and many of the rioters present that day waved Trump flags and dressed in MAGA wear.
If you watched CNN on Jan. 6, you would’ve heard a different story.
As the rioters entered Sanctuary Hall inside the Capitol complex, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper called the situation “stunning” and “dangerous.”
“President Trump could stop this with one tweet, but instead, he’s on Twitter attacking Vice President Pence for refusing to go along with his attempt at a coup, a bloodless coup,” Tapper said.
Democrats and Republicans are living in two separate realities: Democrats with the perception that Trump instigated the attack on the Capitol to overturn a free and fair election, and Republicans with the false belief that a far-left group played a role in that day’s events.
When Americans only receive their news from a source that continuously delivers false information to their audience, they’re informing their worldview on a lie.
And when we can’t agree on basic facts and truth, not only does it pose a challenge for other news outlets reporting accurate information to maintain the public’s trust, but it leads to the eventual breakdown of democracy as we know it.
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