Alwaght- About 60 percent of Americans consider the US media as “enemy of the people” with an overwhelming majority of them also saying that “fake news” is a big problem in the country.
“A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 58 percent of likely US voters at least somewhat agree that the media are ‘truly the enemy of the people,’” the polling firm declared on Friday.
According to the pollster, “voters overwhelmingly believe ‘fake news’ is a problem and a majority agrees with former president Donald Trump that the media have become the enemy of the people.”
The major polling organization further explained that of the overall 83 percent of those polled who said ‘fake news’ was a big problem, 92 percent identified themselves with the Republican Party and 74 percent said they were Democrats.
Fake news was also a phrase coined by Trump, though he only applied it to the dominant liberal media groups mostly affiliated with the Democratic Party.
Rasmussen also noted that most independent voters participating in the survey – 61 percent -- agreed with Republicans on the “enemy of the people” question.
Only 36 percent of those polled did not agree that the media was the enemy of the people and just 23 percent “strongly” disagreed with the proposition, the pollster further added.
As with similar surveys during the Trump era, Democrats believe the media far more than Republicans. Now, 56 percent of Democrats “trust” the mainstream US news outlets versus 58 percent of Republicans who do not.
The new national telephone and online survey of 1,000 US likely voters was conducted on July 7-8 by Rasmussen Reports, which states that the margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95-percent level of confidence.
In June 2019, a survey by Pew Research Center also found that most Americans view fake news as a bigger problem than other critical issues, including terrorism, immigration, climate change and racism.
The latest survey on media trust came amid persisting concerns about the control of US media conglomerates by only a few individuals or firms that include ViacomCBS, Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Media, Fox Corporation, AT&T and Hearst Communications.
