The Public Does Not Really Have a Clue About Fake News | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/media/whos-faking-trump-or-news
Since 1997, Gallup has asked the question this way: “How much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly?” Perhaps they changed the wording in 1997 because that was the year after Fox News was launched and they meant to include CNN but not Fox. In any event, in 1997, the total of “great deal” and “fair amount” stood at 53 percent, where it remained, give or take a point or two, through 2003, when, within a single year, that total plunged to 44 percent. Likely, George W. Bush propaganda about weapons of mass destruction, and media hype about the nonexistent weapons, took their toll. But even then, in 2005 the total who trusted media “a great deal” or “a fair amount” recovered to 50 percent.
But since 2005, “trust and confidence” have been drifting slowly downward. (What Gallup means by “trust and confidence,” as opposed to “trust,” I don’t know, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll collapse the two into “trust.”) By 2008, the total of “a great deal” and “fair amount” of trust had slipped to 43 percent. In 2014, it was down to 40 percent. In 2016, it was down to 32 percent — a new low, reflecting a decline, within six years, of almost one-third.
Par Todd Gitlin