Only 6% of Americans trust the mainstream media: All the lies about vaccines, GMOs and false economic statistics are finally sinking in

Friday, April 22, 2016 by: Isabelle Z.
Tags: mainstream media, lies, public trust

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(NaturalNews) Americans are growing increasingly disillusioned, as the mainstream media continues to lie to them about vital issues such as vaccines, the economy and GMOs.

While a number of people have been looking at the mainstream media with a skeptical eye for some time now, the majority of the population has generally shrugged this off as they go about their daily lives. However, as the state of affairs in the country continues to head in a negative direction on nearly every front, people are getting fed up with the lies and turning toward independent news sources in greater numbers.

People are no longer stuck settling for one of just three major networks for their news, thanks to the expansion of cable, the internet and smartphones. This helps them move away from government talking points and news tainted by corporate influence.

In fact, the AP reports that only 6 percent of people say that they have a lot of confidence in the media. In addition, Democrats were found to be more likely to trust the media than Independents or Republicans.

The study, which was carried out by the Media Insight Project, which is a partnership between the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that Americans prefer news that is concise, current and cites sources or documents that have authority.

The American Press Institute's Executive Director, Tom Rosenstiel, said that as news consumers' expectations change, journalists need to master bigger skill sets.

Accuracy remains of the utmost importance, with almost nine out of 10 Americans saying it is either extremely or very important for the media to provide correct information. Around 40 percent of respondents said that they could recall a particular incident that caused them to lose faith in the media, and such incidents often surrounded a perceived bias or inaccuracy.

The public editor of The New York Times, Margaret Sullivan, told the AP that accuracy needs to trump everything else, even the desire to be the first to publish a particular news piece.

Around 60 percent of Americans are now exposed to news several times a day, and social media is playing a big role in this. Rosenstiel said that people using social media depend on certain cues to decide whether they want to click on a particular news item to read more about it, and knowing the original source of the story is chief among the factors used to determine that trust.

Americans' trust in the media has been declining for years

This latest poll comes in the wake of a Gallup poll from last fall, which showed that the trust Americans have in the media was at a historical low. In that poll, just four out of ten Americans said they had at least a "fair amount" of trust in the media to report the news fairly, accurately and fully. That was down from a high of 55 percent noted in 1998 and 1999, with trust falling more sharply in people younger than 50.

Countless examples of blatant lies and omissions by the mainstream media

The mainstream media has done a lot to erode consumer trust in recent years. For example, mainstream outlets are pretty quiet about the outrageous health risks of GMOs, or vaccines and their connection to autism, despite plenty of scientific evidence.

Lead NBC anchor Brian Williams was recently outed as a serial liar; the network responded by giving him six months off without pay, showing just how little they care about honesty.

In a TEDx talk last year, former investigative reporter for CBS News Sharyl Attkisson revealed how phony grassroots movements get financial backing from corporate and political interests to manipulate news reporting in a practice known as astroturfing.

As reported by Natural News, a top German journalist recently admitted that he was forced to publish writings by intelligence agents under his own name throughout his career, under the threat of losing his job. He said: "I've been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public."

All of this is not a recent trend. In the 1970s, a CIA-based initiative known as "Operation Mockingbird" which aimed to control the mainstream media, came to light.

Thankfully, there are a number of good independent news sites out there that readers can rely on to be accurate and honest. One of these is AlternativeNews.com. Sites like TruthWiki.org take the time to get the real story and don't have to answer to big corporations or government. As more people turn away from the mainstream media toward independent sites, the message is becoming loud and clear: The American public is not going to tolerate lies forever.

Sources include:

SHTFPlan.com

BigStory.AP.org

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

Gallup.com

TruthWiki.org

MediaFactWatch.com