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Much of media is distorted and fake. Knowingly false. We don’t have truthful media. I actually think they’re sick people.
— Donald Trump, in an interview with CBN.
The Trump administration is creating a baseline expectation among its loyalists that they can’t trust anything said by the media. The spat over crowd size is a low-stakes, semi-comic dispute, but the groundwork is being laid for much more consequential debates over what is, and isn’t, true. Delegitimizing the institutions that might report inconvenient or damaging facts about the president is strategic for an administration that has made a slew of impossible promises and takes office amid a cloud of ethics concerns and potential scandals.
two-thirds
Of respondents to a Morning Consult poll found ABC, CBS and NBC to be credible news sources, while less than 1 in 5 found Breitbart or Fox News to be credible. Interesting finding: Thirty-one percent said they see fake news stories in their social media feeds more than once a day, and 55 percent said they have started reading a story only to realize it was fake.
82%
Of middle-schoolers failed to differentiate between news stories and “sponsored content,” according to a Stanford University study, reports Quartz. “According to the study, more than two-thirds of middle-school students failed to flag as biased a post written by a bank executive and arguing for young adults to pursue more financial-planning help. Likewise, some 40% of high-school students believed a photo and headline that suggested deformed daisies were evidence of toxic conditions near Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The photo included no source or location tag.”
In the last few years, Trump has been joined by at least two billionaires who are determined to exploit cracks in the wall of defense around the press. The members of this club are innovators. They have sued or funded suits to defend reputations or protect privacy. But an underlying aim appears to be to punish critics… or even destroy entire media outlets. … This kind of manipulation of the law is unfolding at a keen moment of weakness for the press, which has already been buffeted by falling revenue and mounting public disaffection.