News-media roundup: 2/3 of Americans have no or 'not very much' trust in mass media to report fully, accurately, fairly

Gallup

For the first time, a plurality of Americans have told The Gallup Organization that they have no trust and confidence in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. That was the response of 38 percent of those surveyed Sept. 1-16; 28% said they had "not very much" trust and confidence, for a net negative rating of 66%, virtually two-thirds of the sample. Only 34% said they had a great deal, or a fair amount, of trust and confidence. That is "just two points higher than the lowest that Gallup has recorded, in 2016 during the presidential campaign, Gallup's Megan Brennan writes. "Just 7% of Americans have 'a great deal' of trust and confidence in the media, and 27% have 'a fair amount'." The biggest decline in trust was among independent voters; opinions of those who identify with a major party were slightly more favorable than in 2021.

"There are some significant differences within several subgroups . . . based on aggregated data from 2020 through 2022," providing samples big enough for analysis, Brennan writes. "Older Democrats and independents are more trusting of the media than their younger counterparts. While liberal and moderate Democrats register roughly equal levels of trust in the media, independents' trust differs markedly, based on their political ideology: Those who describe themselves as liberal are the most confident, and conservatives are the least confident. . . . Independents with a college degree are more likely than those without a degree to express trust in the media, but there are no differences among Democrats or Republicans based on college education."

Collecting signatures on a petition to declare her town a "sanctuary city for the unborn" got the news director and co-anchor at a Gray Television station in North Platte, Neb., fired for violating KNOP's policy that says they can't “actively engage in any political activity for any candidate, party or ballot initiative.” Veteran Iowa broadcaster Dave Busiek writes about it.

Inflation is hurting newspapers' finances, reports Rick Edmonds of The Poynter Institute. "It has also been an off year for revenues in the hard-pressed sector, but expense increases have been truly terrible," especially for independently owned papers, with newsprint up 30% or more, fuel up 50% and production supplies and electricity up 10% to 15%.

Votebeat, which education publisher Chalkbeat started as a pop-up newsroom to cover election administration during the pandemic in 2020, is now a permanent nonprofit entity, thanks to $3.1 million in fundraising, Editor and Publisher reports. Its co-founder and general manager, Alison Go, told E&P, “A lot of people don’t have a lot of information on elections, and so that vacuum is filled with nonsense. It’s just filling a yawning gap in coverage that there really is a civic demand for.” Votebeat reporters are in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Texas, where "they saw both urgent needs and significant opportunities to make an impact," E&P reports. 

The nation should spend $10 billion to revive local news, Washington Post political columnist Perry Bacon Jr. writes: "[It] isn’t much money . . . to spend on the collapse of local news, something that the nation defines as a crisis." But his plan doesn't take existing news outlets into account.

Keeping it local: The 23-year-old Eastern Shore Post in Virginia has been bought by Ted Shockley, the owner and editor of monthly lifestyle publication Eastern Shore First, and Jim Ritch, a Post photographer who was a newspaper leader in Maryland and Delaware.