The number of Americans who say that they have NO trust AT ALL in mass media has hit an all-time high, while the number of Americans who say that they trust the media is at an all-time low. The mass media of today has absolutely no credibility, and they don’t seem to care, either. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The number of Americans who say that they have no trust, zero, zero trust at all in mass media has hit an all time high while the number of Americans who say that they trust the media is an all time low. And you know what? The mass media doesn’t seem to care. They’re just whistling through the graveyard aren’t they? That’s what amazes me is the arrogance. The absolute arrogance of mass media to say, so what? We don’t care. Fox is gonna say, so what? If they don’t like it, they go to turn to the other channel. MSNBC, CNN, so what? We don’t care that trust in media is at an all time low to where people have zero, zero trust in what the media is saying.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. More than a third of the country right now says, no, the mass media, newspapers, cable news, it’s lies. It’s nonstop lies. 40% of the country is saying that. And here’s the thing, what’s funny about this is CNN was recently given, obviously when they changed leadership and they got rid of Cuomo because of what they were having him do with his brother, all that, CNN had the opportunity to do the right thing. To finally get back on track. And then of course, Ukraine, Israel. So they, oh, well, we gotta bring out our generals. We gotta bring out our defense contractors.
Mike Papantonio: Not to tell ’em not to report the news, but to report propaganda.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. So they immediately went right back into that cycle where they lost all their trust, which was back in 2004 or even before that, pushing the Iraq war. They fall into these same traps because at the end of the day, for them, it’s not about telling the truth. It’s about telling enough of a story to sell some advertisements. That’s what it is.
Mike Papantonio: You know, of course, I was a journalism major, a news editing major at University of Florida and it’s interesting, between 1972 and 1997 when I was in school there, or part of those years anyway, the trust level was 72 to 75%. How does it possibly fall to where it is right now, 27%? How do you get there? I don’t know. But to me, you have, it’s this arrogance. The arrogance is just phenomenal. It is, well, we own the house. We’re gonna do what we want to do. It’s, we recognize it’s not news, it’s propaganda, it’s entertainment. We know it’s not news. But it’s almost like they don’t think it through and say, okay, where does this leave journalism? Who the hell wants to be a journalist nowadays? I mean, really, who the hell wants to say, I’m gonna go to school? Because first of all, any type of investigative journalism is over. You got the Lever. We talk about the Lever all the time. That’s real journalism. But that’s so rare. There’s some other organizations.
Farron Cousins: The Intercept is a good one.
Mike Papantonio: Intercept is a great example.
Farron Cousins: But the fact that we can list all of them
Mike Papantonio: On one hand
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Shows us that the whole thing is essentially dead.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. That’s where we go to for our stories and it’s just good stuff because they’re real journalists really working. But to say a kid coming outta school right now, say, really, what an honorable profession. I really wanna be a journalist. You wanna be a pimp. That’s what you wanna be. If you wanna move into a journal, you wanna be a pimp for some corporate entity. That’s all it is.
Farron Cousins: You want your face on the news, and you get to be one of those smiling personalities and sipping coffee with Kathie Lee Gifford. That’s what you want. That’s what people think of journalism these days.
Mike Papantonio: Well, journalists, people actually think, what is that thing called, The View with Joy Behar? They think of that as journal. They think that’s journalism. I mean, you got five crazy women talking about crazy nonsense. That’s journalism in their mind. That’s where we’ve gotten that The View, if you ask people, is that journalism, they go, yeah, that’s journalism.
Farron Cousins: One of the only places to actually see real news on cable is either John Oliver, which I guess that’s HBO, he’s good, but he’s satire. He’s not supposed to be news. And the Daily Show is still pretty good with it. Not as good as with Jon Stewart. But those satire shows are the only ones who actually kind of tell more truth than everybody else.
Mike Papantonio: And they’ve lost confidence in that too, Farron, because the political ideology is just so slanted. So they’ve lost interest there. They can’t pick up a newspaper and say, this is journalism anymore. It’s awful. If you’re a young person saying, this is my career, forget it. Unless you wanna be an entertainer, a talking head, which I’ve done, you know, I did MSNBC for years. I did America’s Lawyer. We’ve done a lot of that. You and I have done it together, but I don’t even recognize it anymore. I don’t even look at it and say, yeah, this is journalism.
Farron Cousins: No.
Mike Papantonio: It’s The View, it’s The View.
