“Look for an upswing in media trust in the next Edelman Barometer as the Twitter-less ‘Mr. Fake News’ fades from the national scene.”

Kevin McCauley, odwyerpr.com, 14 Jan 2021

Oh, Kevin McCauley, you’re so adorable when your misplaced optimism borders on delusional.

Meanwhile, back in reality, Axios reports (21 Jan 2021) that trust in news media has fallen to an all-time low, as illustrated by the following graph:

At a glance, it appears as though the steepest plunge came when news outlets started lying about COVID-19, though correlation does not equal causation.

There are a few bullet points that served as takeaways:

• 56% of Americans agree with the statement that “Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.” 
• 58% think that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology or political position than with informing the public.”
• When Edelman re-polled Americans after the election, the figures had deteriorated even further, with 57% of Democrats trusting the media and only 18% of Republicans.

I can imagine that there is a desire among the curious to further study some of these trends, including the tendency of Democrats to drink the Kool-Aid when hearing what they want to hear.

According to Axios, “many news professionals are determined to do something about it.” To this end, and after brief consideration, I have the following advice to offer:

Stop lying to us.

I’ll grant that I seldom watch the news, except just to leave YouTube comments. I suspect that this has a lot to do with the fact that I’m not a diaper-wearing adult, and therefore fall well outside televised news’ key demographic. Much of my interaction with the news has to do with making fun of it, which isn’t that hard considering that the last few years of journalism has been characterized by obsessively going after just one guy.

If there’s one thing about this study that bothers me, it’s that as many people trust the news media as they do. Forty-six percent? That’s way too high! That suggests that 46% (nearly half) of all Americans will believe complete butt-slurry if it came from the mouth of a man in a suit. When I walk down the street, half the people I see don’t look like they’re drooling all over themselves or trying to bite their own ears, so I find it hard to picture half of Americans dumb enough to trust the three-letter networks.

But do you know what I do see? A lot of fat people. And lots of Americans eat at McDonald’s. Corporate left-wing media is like McDonald’s for your brain. That stuff makes brains fat, sluggish, and tired.

When people trust the news, they keep going back for more and more of that mental McDonald’s, and as they keep stuffing themselves, their bloated paunch distends.