Shocker: Americans Still Don't Trust Antique Media

You know what this calls for? I'd say a group of hundreds of liberal "journalists" ought to get together and figure out ways to shape the news. Oh, wait, they tried that already. Well, considering how poorly the media is viewed by the public, they're not quite at the putrid level of the Pelosi Congress, but we figure after the next few months of trying to prop up the Democrats heading into the midterms, they'll probably even out considering right now they're only slightly ahead of the folks they're carrying water for.

Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news -- with no more than 25% of Americans saying they have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in either. These views have hardly budged since falling more than 10 percentage points from 2003-2007.

The findings are from Gallup's annual Confidence in Institutions survey, which found the military faring best and Congress faring worst of 16 institutions tested. Americans' confidence in newspapers and television news is on par with Americans' lackluster confidence in banks and slightly better than their dismal rating of Health Management Organizations and big business.

The decline in trust since 2003 is also evident in a 2009 Gallup poll that asked about confidence and trust in the "mass media" more broadly. While perceptions of media bias present a viable hypothesis, Americans have not over the same period grown any more likely to say the news media are too conservative or too liberal.

Outside of the delusional far left or the mentally deranged, is there really anyone out there who believes the media is too conservative?

Maybe trust in the media would inch up if they showed some basic competence.
President Barack Obama hosts an iftar dinner, the meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk fast for Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan, in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, Friday, Aug. 13, 2010. For over a billion Muslims, Ramadan is a time of intense devotion and reflection. Obama emphasized the American tenet of religious freedom just as New York City is immersed in a deeply sensitive debate about whether a mosque should be built near the site of the World Trade Center that was destroyed during the September 11, 1981 terror attacks. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

That last gem via Tim Blair.