Like a couple of hundred thousand of my fellow Americans, I was
this close to cancelling my subscription to The Washington Post, but waited to learn more about the story behind Jeff Bezos' decision to pull the newspaper's presidential endorsement. What I
learned in Bezos' op-ed this morning, was that he made the decision after seeing recently released
Gallup data showing that American's trust in "mass media" -- newspapers, TV and radio -- to fully, fairly and accurately report the news, had fallen to an all-time low.
How pulling or
publishing a presidential endorsement would exacerbate that isn't entirely clear, until you dig into the Gallup data a little more. Specifically, its tabs showing how the news media trust skews along
political party lines.
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Look at the chart above and you'll see 42 point delta between Republicans (only 12% of whom said they trust America's news media) and Democrats (a 54% majority of whom
trust America's news media).
In other words, Bezos' decision to go dark on a Washington Post endorsement was based on placating to a an extreme polarized view of a minority of
American voters. According to Gallup, only about 28% of Americans consider themselves
Republican.
What's more, independent research from other sources, including Ipsos' political tracking team, shows a strong correlation that Republican news media preferences correlate with
being factually inaccurate. In other words, voters who are most misinformed are the ones least likely to trust the media.
Personally, that makes sense to me when you consider the untrustworthy
nature of the media they use as their primary source of information, but I've already written about that
a number of times.
Facts aside, there is a far more fundamental reason why there is a strong partisan Republican distrust of American's news media: partisanship.
Need I remind you that
Donald Trump's first official act on his first full day as President in 2017 was to give a speech in front of the
CIA's wall of fallen heroes declaring war on America's news media. And he's been re-declaring it ever since, including at this week's rally in Madison Square Garden.
Trump is not alone.
Republican leadership up and down the ballot have persistently attacked the validity of America's news media.
It should be no surprise that Republicans have such a low regard for America's
news media. What is surprising, is that the owner of The Washington Post does too.
Democracy dies when a minority of Americans determine what goes dark there.
