Why Does Middle America Distrust the Mainstream News Media?
Introduction. According to an article that appeared last year in The Hill, a liberal online newspaper, “Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the mainstream press is full of fake news, a sentiment that is held by a majority of voters across the ideological spectrum. According to data from the latest Harvard-Harris poll, which was provided exclusively to The Hill, 65 percent of voters believe there is a lot of fake news in the mainstream media. That number includes 80 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of independents and 53 percent of Democrats. Eighty-four percent of voters said it is hard to know what news to believe online” (Easley, 2017). I was genuinely surprised and very intrigued when I read this article. What are the reasons for this lack of confidence in—and even hostility toward—our news providers? Just how bad indeed are popular perceptions of the news media, especially in America's small-town heartland (the so-called “middle America”)? Does mid-America trust the mainstream news media or not? If yes, why? If no, what are the reasons for such skepticism and even animosity toward our news outlets? To answer this research question, I conducted a single-case study of Delaware, Ohio, where I live. I believe that this is a contextually important public issue insofar as such an inquiry may increase our understanding of the news media's trustworthiness and credibility in the eyes of the public—or the lack thereof. It is also a worthy research topic which is particularly relevant today given the very acrimonious political climate, divisive partisan politics, and especially the controversy surrounding the so-called “fake news,” which President Donald Trump has bombastically labeled “the number one enemy of the American people.” (Does this means that ISIS is off the hook now?)
The research setting for this case study is Delaware, a moderately conservative university town located just north of Columbus in central Ohio. Ohio has been undoubtedly a GOP-leaning or so-called “Red” state since at least the early 1990s. Delaware is a town best known as the birthplace of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, a rather mediocre Republican chief executive mostly remembered for his brutal suppression of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. It is also the host town of the famous Little Brown Jug fair, including the wildly popular Triple Crown of Pacing horse-racing series. Delaware is where I have lived for a very long time, so I cannot escape feeling like a complete participant in the research scene or enmeshment with local participants.
When direct observation is difficult or impossible due to various obstacles, one could use indirect observation. Indirect observation is when we observe one thing as a means of determining the occurrence of something else. It is a research instrument that relies on information from secondary sources. The researcher uses the pre-recorded observations of others, such as public records, private documents, collected statistical data, or other publicly available materials. My indirect field observation consists mainly of online archival research of public documents and records such as the latest census data and other descriptive statistics. As a qualitative research method, the so-called document analysis is very important and particularly useful in conjunction with one-on-one qualitative interviews and Qualtrics survey responses which form the basis of my data analysis and interpretation.
Descriptive Information
According to the latest census data (http://censusviewer.com/city/OH/Delaware), the town had 34,753 people in 2010, of whom 90.65% were white:
American Indian 65 0.19%
Asian American 472 1.36%
African American 1,573 4.53%
Hispanic 881 2.54%
White 31,503 90.65%
Other 1,140 3.28%
The town has grown considerably since 1990, when I came to live in Delaware, whose population at that time was just 20,030, according to the 1990 census. But its estimated population for 2018 has jumped to 39,267, according to the most recent United States census estimates. A lot of people have been relocating here from the Greater Columbus area over the past twenty years—to escape congested traffic, crime, racial tensions, rising housing rents and prices, an aggressive police force, and even worse overcrowding. Being a predominantly white town with a relatively small non-white minority (less than 10% of the total population) makes Delaware rather typical of middle America, which makes it possible to draw broader generalizations from my research findings.
Population by gender:
Female 18,081 52.03%
Male 16,672 47.97%
Population by age:
Persons 0 to 17 years 8,845 25.45%
Persons 18 to 64 years 22,067 63.50%
Persons 65 years and over 3,841 11.05%
Household income:
$10,000 to $14,999 households 3-4%
$15,000 to $24,999 households 7-8%
$25,000 to $34,999 households 4-5%
$35,000 to $49,999 households 8-9%
$50,000 to $74,999 households 15-16%
$75,000 to $99,999 households 14-15%
$100,000 to $149,999 households 22-23%
$150,000 to $199,999 households 12-13%
$200,000+ households 8-9%
The median household income shows that Delaware is a moderately affluent town, where middle-class families are the predominant part of the local population. For example, only 37% of Delaware's residents rent their homes, compared to 63% who own them. The residents of Delaware County are—statistically speaking at least—more affluent than those of any other county in Ohio, according to the official United States census.
Registered voters—19,921 (2017):
Female 10,643 53.43%
Male 9,278 46.57%
Party affiliation of registered voters:
Democrats 4,644 23.31%
Republicans 6,010 30.17%
Libertarians 42 0.21%
Green Party 10 0.05%
Independents 9,215 46.26%
Independents predominate in this GOP-governed town, where Republicans outnumber Democrats—although not by very large margin (in fact, by less than 7%). In this respect, Delaware is hardly unique in America's more conservative heartland.
Marital status of registered voters:
Married 8,548 42.91%
Living together 1,248 6.26%
Single or unknown 10,125 50.83%
As one of the two blue-collar interview participants told me while I was trying to persuade her to take part in my project's audio-recorded interviews, “Delaware is a most ordinary hick town in which, however, there is a major liberal-arts university.” The Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU), founded in 1842, is one of the nation's top (and most expensive) liberal-arts colleges which is located in downtown Delaware. Just outside Delaware's city limits, you will also find the Methodist Theological School of Ohio (MTSO), as well as a local branch of the Columbus State Community College (CSCC), a very popular two-year community college. You will also find the OWU's Perkins Observatory which is an excellent astronomical observatory that is open year-around to the paying public. Those working or studying at the Ohio Wesleyan University or the Columbus State Community College usually vote for liberal Democrats but a majority of the local population still supports Republican candidates, including Donald Trump in 2016. Which is a bit surprising given the fact that 9.3% of Delaware's residents are listed as living below the poverty line, including 10.9% of those under age 18, as well as 8.6% of those aged 65 or over (according to the 2010 census). As already stated, 30.17% of the adult residents are registered Republicans, 23.31% are registered Democrats, while the majority—46.26%—are independents.
Here is the town's educational/workforce profile, according to the 2010 census:
• High School Grad or Higher: 92.3%
• Associate's Degree or Higher: 40.2%
• Bachelor’s Degree or Higher: 32.1%
• Graduate Degree: 9%
• White Collar: 62%
• Blue Collar (or working-class): 37%
About a third of the town's adult population have attained a bachelor’s degree or a higher level of education, yet close to two-thirds of all local adults are employed in white-collar jobs. The percentage of blue collar jobs is too low for Delaware to be seen as just another “hick” or working-class town—like most of the neighboring towns located in central Ohio certainly are. A possible explanation for this socio-demographic discrepancy is that Delaware has a rather large administrative (local government) apparatus—especially so for a GOP-ruled town (Republicans usually claim that they are all for small government). Many of its residents (at least 12-13% of the population) are county and state government employees working either locally or in nearby Columbus. But in most respects Delaware is a very typical mid-America town whose people do not differ much educationally, culturally, religiously, socially or even politically from the GOP-leaning populations of other central Ohio towns. They are mostly middle class or lower middle class, predominantly Evangelicals, Protestants or Catholics, typically of European descent, and with strongly conservative “family values.” There is no reason to believe that their views and opinions about the mainstream news media will be that much different from those held by the citizens of other Ohio towns—or, for that matter, of other “heartland” towns in mid-America.
In an encouraging sign for our aggressively expanding news industry, nearly all of Delaware's households own at least one radio and a TV set. Most of them have also some sort of a PC (desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone or pocket PC). More than two-thirds of all households subscribe to cable TV (or streaming video), including a lot of news-seeking subscribers who pay for cable TV bundles that include many news channels. Four-fifths of Delaware's households have broadband Internet service with access to the digital news and social media, including paid news apps. At least 2.48% or more of all households use a satellite TV dish antenna. Although this particular textual-harvesting fact does not shed light on their news-viewing habits, more than half of households pay for a newspaper or magazine subscription in print or digitally. In other words, most of Delaware's households are subscribed to news in some form (digital or print). Viewed in light of available national statistics, Delaware's population appears to be at least equally exposed to the news media in their homes as anywhere else in “heartland” or middle America.
Data Analysis and Conclusions
Rather than a theoretically-derived research project, this is a problem-based inquiry, whose praxis-based, phronetic approach focuses on the perceived lack of public confidence in our mass media—probably resulting from the latter's dishonest or irresponsibly sensationalist distortion of the facts as well as lapses and gaps in many news narratives. My qualitative data analysis is partly based on the critical-theoretical approach, which is coupled with some interpretive understanding of the first-person perspective that research participants have on their own personal experiences. I have used the so-called “friendship model of interviewing” or “collaborative/interactive interviewing.” One of the advantages of using such a collaborative and friendly interviewing stance (also known as “responsive interviewing”) as well as of employing personal friends as interviewees is to enable the latter to tell their views and emotions more honestly and truthfully in friendly, free-flowing dialogues. Most of the participants have indeed described more openly and revealingly their personal opinions and feelings about the mainstream media. I have also relied on the “emic” or emergent (rather than “top down”) reading of the research data to carry out what is called a systematic inductive “grounded analysis” where “the study’s emphases develop from the data rather than from research questions or existing literature” (Tracy, 2013, p. 184). Six second-level analytic codes (larger themes) have emerged from the process of secondary-level coding, which is important to the iterative analysis because “Rather than simply mirroring the data, second-level codes serve to explain, theorize, and synthesize them. Second-level coding includes interpretation and identifying patterns, rules, or cause–effect progressions” (Tracy, 2013, p. 194). Coalesced from an initial dozen of first-level descriptive (including in vivo) codes are the following six interpretive (“focused”) codes or major themes:
• First, I found little public trust in the Fourth Estate. According to some of the interviewees, the news media—the supposed watchdog on the government's abuses of power—act as official Washington's main instrument for manipulating the dominant views and values in our society. Instead of being an independent, honest, free-thinking and impartial democratic institution, the media are seen as an untrustworthy and Machiavellian chief propagandist for our ruling bipartisan elite. As the eldest interviewee pointed out, because of such wide-spread public perceptions, 80% of surveyed Republicans say they distrust even the GOP's top conservative newspaper, The Wall Street Journal (interview #1).
• Second, the media are seen as the global corporations’ public-relations arm and the government's tool of social control and domination. The governing capitalist class uses the news media to perpetuate its power, wealth and privileged status by imposing its own public philosophy, political views, economic beliefs, culture and morality upon the rest of society. According to a retired academic, “Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, BBC World News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, PBS and NPR are among the news organizations I trust the least. All of these media outlets are secretly linked to agencies of the federal government—and in the case of the BBC World News, to the British government. In fact, a lot of people have called CNN Headline News 'the State Department's news service.' All of these so-called independent news organizations are the equivalent of George Orwell's Ministry of Truth responsible for spreading the propaganda of the totalitarian regime” (interview #5).
• Third, instead of providing accurate, honest, fair, reliable and balanced information to the people, the corporate news media are seen as manipulating public opinion to ensure the Gramscian hegemony of the ruling capitalist class over a largely cowed and pliant population. Far from honestly reporting the facts and providing truthful commentary and analysis to the public, the mainstream media are seen as purveying a mixture of imperialistic “national exceptionalism,” xenophobic hate and violence, hegemonic foreign wars, and subservient obedience to higher authority. “Russ,” another retired academic, asked almost rhetorically, “But who are the anonymous powers responsible for the media's subservience and complicit silence...? Have you heard of the late German journalist Udo Ulfkotte? Spelled U-d-o U-l-f-k-o-t-t-e. In his bestselling book Journalists for Hire, he confesses to having been secretly paid by the German and American spy agencies to lie, to manipulate, to spread false information and propaganda, rather than tell the truth to the reading public during his entire 25-year career working for several major Western newspapers and magazines. Each one of which, according to his book, has been turned into NATO's propaganda mouthpiece. It's all an Orwellian type of deception for our naïve and gullible populations” (interview #1).
• Fourth, some of the interviewees feel that nonstop lies, pro-government propaganda and disinformation are the mainstream news media's primary instrument for indoctrinating and brainwashing ordinary people. A working-class Republican interviewee, “Julia,” even attributed to our news media the old Goebbelsian motto: “Repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth.” (interview #4).
• Fifth, according to the interviewees, the news media are owned by a handful of greedy corporations driven by an insatiable drive for profits. In the era of predatory monopoly capitalism, the mass media have concentrated and consolidated their corporate control over the news in order to maximize the power and windfall profits of a privileged elite (including the media's owners and shareholders). In the words of a non-partisan interviewee, “Bob,” “...six or seven mega-corporations own every media in the U.S., including nearly all newspapers, magazines, book publishers, TV networks, cable channels, movie studios, music labels, and popular websites. If I remember correctly, these include Time Warner, News Corporation, Walt Disney, CBS Corporation, Viacom, NBC Universal and probably Spectrum as well. These giant transnational conglomerates own or control all information and communications in the U.S. and around the world. The world’s largest media owner is Google, closely followed—I believe—by Walt Disney, Comcast, Facebook and 21st Century Fox. We know now the formerly well-concealed truth about how Google was founded and grew under the protective wing of the Pentagon and our spy agencies. Google and Facebook each post billions of ads every year and, jointly, they account for a fifth of the Internet's global ad revenues.... These mega-media corporations monopolize and control almost everything we read, watch and listen to, especially online. They form a truly global mega-media empire, more powerful and influential than the more notorious 'military-industrial complex,' in President Eisenhower's famous parting words” (interview #5).
• Sixth, several of the interviewees are well aware that asymmetrical power relations, corporate control over “fake news” production and other Habermasian hegemonic processes are politically empowering and lavishly enriching our governing ownership class, including the bipartisan media elites. As one media-savvy interviewee explained, “The corporate mass media justify their monopolistic power and control by publishing and disseminating fake news, half-truths and propagandistic commentary that serve the interests of the ruling class or the so-called one-percenters. That is, the very same people who in fact own the bulk of our news media” (interview #5). But, as this study is trying to demonstrate, widespread popular perceptions about the mass media's “false communications” are the reason for the media's growing public image as an undemocratic and manipulative propaganda tool which is leading to their diminished plausibility and effectiveness.
On the basis of my field research and iterative analysis, it appears that a nearly irreconcilable tension (a dialectical contradiction?) now exists between the news media's monopoly (and censorship) over information and communications, on the one hand, and small-town America's populist resistance to it, on the other. The print, online and broadcast media's control over the news is resented as a kind of tyrannical monopolistic power. One can hardly ignore the wide-spread popular impression of a supposedly dishonest and scheming “fake news media” (to use another trumpism fashionable in Trumpdom)—even though such an impression is based on subjective perceptions that might or might not correspond to reality. In fact, the first and most important conclusion of my research is that there are profound doubts and misgivings in small-town America about the professional news media's honesty and credibility, as can be seen from the face-to-face interviews and the Qualtrics survey. This skepticism is confirmed by the second-order analysis of the interviewees' interpretations—as illustrated, for example, by this outburst from the frustrated lifelong Democrat “Russ”: “For nearly two years now our print and broadcast media have been raving and ranting about how Putin has meddled in our elections—President Trump's so-called 'Russiagate'—and how Moscow must be punished most severely for it, even though absolutely no real evidence has been presented so far, only hearsay” (interview #1).
While our interviewees appear to have divergent world views and other differences in ideological perspective, they seem to have a common touchstone and generally agree on the untrustworthiness of the news media, which coincides with the prevailing (but far from unanimous) skepticism of the participants in the Qualtrics survey. My research finding about the mass media's perceived lack of integrity is also confirmed by the results of credible public-opinion surveys such as, for instance, the Axios/MonkeySurvey poll conducted June 15-19, 2018, according to which 72 percent of all respondents think that the news media tend to report “fake, false or purposely misleading news,” including 92 percent of Republicans, 79 percent of independents and 53 percent of Democrats. Only 25 percent of all respondents in that particular poll believe that the news media “rarely or never” lie, including just 7 percent of Republicans, 20 percent of independents and 46 percent of Democrats (Fischer, 2018).
Second and equally important, the news media's perceived lack of honesty extends equally to liberal (Democratic or so-called “left-wing”) and conservative (Republican or so-called “right-wing”) journalists and publications. According to some interviewees, The New York Times and CNN are as much distrusted and disliked as The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. And the only trusted mainstream media outlets mentioned in the Qualtrics survey are NPR and Bloomberg, while just a few of the survey participants see BBC and NPR as representing a greater and more objective mix of political views. In the individual interviews, the maverick Republican “Doug” asked rhetorically in a display of disdain for our broadcast media: “How can you trust someone like liberal CNN anchor Chris Cuomo? He keeps repeating the same lies. Anderson Cooper is even worse: he lies every time he opens his mouth on CNN. But how are they any different from the disgraced Bill O'Reilly, the former Fox News anchor who fooled and manipulated his viewers for so many years? They all tells us only what their bosses want them to tells us” (interview #2).
Third but no less important, registered Democrats are still more likely than registered Republicans or independents to have confidence in the information provided by professional news organizations, according to the interviews. Among the five interviewees, only “Russ” and “Jim” (both registered Democrats) said that the news media can be trusted to tell the truth “at least some of the time” (interviews #1 and #3). In sharp contrast, Republican interviewee “Julia” stated metaphorically (and quite philosophically given her menial job) that journalists remind her of “a used-car salesman who'll never tell you the truth. They'll repeat a lie a thousand times to make you believe it. They're serving the narrow, selfish interests of an unaccountable, self-selected elite. Even the president is chosen by an unrepresentative Electoral College consisting of self-appointed local bigshots. President Trump actually lost the 2016 election—by more than 3 million votes. So did George W. Bush in 2000” (interview #4). Registered Republican “Doug” and the independent “Bob” were equally harsh in their deep suspicions and apprehensions about the mass media (interviews #2 and #5).
Fourth, the prevailing public perceptions of our news media are so negative and sometimes antagonistic that they indicate a near crisis level of public distrust, alienation and even scorn for contemporary journalism. At least one of the interviewees appears to have far more confidence in alternative (progressive) journalists and the Internet-based social media—when compared to our corporate news organizations and journalists. In response to an interview question asking about his favorite sources of news and commentary, the independent interviewee “Bob” explained, “...most days I access the news from alternative and progressive websites like Consortiumnews.com, Antiwar.com, the Unz Review, the Ron Paul Institute for Peace, the Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, GlobalResearch.org and others. That's because I trust them more than the others” (interview #5). A couple of other interviewees, Democrats “Russ” and “Jim,” expressed a similar preference for the alternative or social media (interviews #1 and #3). Asked if she trusts the media, Qualtrics survey participant #5 replied, “yes social media i.e. facebook.” Which means that perhaps in the future there might be a viable alternative to the news market dominance by our corporate mega-media (with its illegitimate and incestuous symbiosis with our governing corporate class). Such a paradigmatic shift would be a most welcome development, especially at a time when our mass media continue to toe the official party line and peddle their propagandistic snake oil to the public.
Qualtrics Survey. The Qualtrics survey responses largely (but not entirely) confirm the negative conclusions drawn from the individual interviews:
• In response to the survey question “What kind of effect do you think our news media have on our elected political leaders?” an employed white 43-year-old married man with an associate degree (participant #1) replied, “Sadly, the talking heads influence people far beyond what I could have ever dreamed.” In response to the question “Which news organizations do you trust the most?” he replied, “My skepticism has grown so much, I really don't know.” His response to the question “Do you think that the news and commentary you get from the news media are one-sided and tend to favor one side at the expense of the other?” was a disparaging one, “Absolutely. It all depends on who is signing the checks. Everyone is for sale.” His response to the question “Do you think there are any 'fake news' media outlets? Why might some media outlets be inclined to sensationalize or elevate certain stories over other stories?” was equally sarcastic: “Well, Fox News, who is the one who likes to call out fake news is known for broadcasting a number of things that don't fall under the category of truth.” Participant #1 believes that only NPR represents a greater and more objective mix of political views which hardly makes him a corporate media fan.
• An employed white 36-year-old divorced woman with an associate degree (participant #2) replied with an emphatic “YES!!!” to the survey questions “Do you think that the news and commentary you get from the news media are one-sided and tend to favor one side at the expense of the other?” and “Do you think there are any 'fake news' media outlets? Why might some media outlets be inclined to sensationalize or elevate certain stories over other stories?” She believes that only BBC represents a greater and more objective mix of political views. In response to the question “Which news organizations do you trust the most?” she replied, “Bloomberg. NPR. They are unbiased.” To the question “What kind of effect do you think our news media have on our elected political leaders?” she replied, “It provides an outlet for their campaigns and agendas.” Participant #2 is definitely a mixed bag: a large dose of skepticism which is intermixed, however, with trust in at least a couple of mainstream media outlets.
• An employed/self-employed white 29-year-old married woman with an associate degree (participant #3) replied to the survey question “In your view, which mainstream news outlets represent a greater and more objective mix of political views?” with a categorical “None. I feel they are all biased towards one side or the other.” In response to the question “What kind of effect do you think our news media have on our elected political leaders?“ she replied, “A lot. Many either do not have time to research or are simply too lazy to do so and choose whomever looks better through the media's report.” To the question “Which news organizations do you trust the most?” she again replied, “None. They all have a hidden agenda.” To the question “Do you think that the news and commentary you get from the news media are one-sided and tend to favor one side at the expense of the other?” she replied, “100%! They all are biased to one side or the other. However i must say, i stopped watching news a long time ago because it's just like watching a 2 years old fight. Nothing ever is achieved.” In response to the question “Do you think there are any 'fake news' media outlets? Why might some media outlets be inclined to sensationalize or elevate certain stories over other stories?” she replied, “Some are inclined to do so because they are paid off by higher officials. Pretty much the definition of propaganda. I feel it happens on both sides. Most news media is very corrupt. I say most because i do not have enough facts to say all.” Obviously, participant #3 is yet another skeptic about our mass media.
• In response to the survey question “In your view, which mainstream news outlets represent a greater and more objective mix of political views?” an employed white 26-year-old married man with an associate degree (participant #4) replied: “NPR, BBC News, Al Jazeera.” (It is very questionable, however, if Al Jazeera, a Qatari government-funded TV news channel, is mainstream media).This self-identified “Green Party/other” supporter responded to the question: “What kind of effect do you think our news media have on our elected political leaders?” with “I think it can definitely sway opinion.” Question: “Which news organizations do you trust the most?” Reply: “NPR. Although not completely neutral, I feel like NPR does a fairly good job of allowing everyone on all sides a chance to speak. I like BBC as well, but feel like the articles I see online are swayed by popular opinion (I tend to browse the 'most read' section, which is of course padded by the viewers).” Question: “Do you think that the news and commentary you get from the news media are one-sided and tend to favor one side at the expense of the other?” Reply: “I think NPR does, actually. The tone of the reporters at times doesn't doesn't neutral to me.” Question: “Do you think there are any 'fake news' media outlets? Why might some media outlets be inclined to sensationalize or elevate certain stories over other stories?” Reply: “Yes. Sentimentalization draws more readers/viewers.” Question: “In general, do you have confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the information you get from professional news outlets?” Reply: “Sort of. I feel the need to check multiple outlets to get a good picture of a situation. The fact that many are controlled by the same organization is concerning.” Undoubtedly, one more skeptic!
• In response to the survey question “What kind of effect do you think our news media have on our elected political leaders?” an employed white 36-year-old divorced woman with an associate degree (participant #5) replied, “it can make or break them.” In response to the question “Which news organizations do you trust the most?” she replied, “NPR, Bloomberg, ProPublica—they are the most unbiased” (In fact, ProPublica, which is an independent, nonprofit “newsroom” devoted to investigative journalism, is hardly a mainstream outlet). In response to the question “Do you think that the news and commentary you get from the news media are one-sided and tend to favor one side at the expense of the other?” she replied, “[They are all] one sided.” A self-identifying Democrat, her response to the question “In general, do you have confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the information you get from professional news outlets?” was just “meh it depends on the source.” Her response to the question “In your view, which mainstream news outlets represent a greater and more objective mix of political views?” was “[They are all] completely bias[ed].” But it is not easy to draw conclusions from her elliptical, truncated (and frequently misspelled) answers.
• In response to the survey question “What kind of effect do you think our news media have on our elected political leaders?” an employed and married 37-year-old black man with an associate degree (participant #6) replied, “Very little. Politicians are generally puppets who are controlled by the agendas of their multi-billionaire donors. The news is controlled by advertisers.” In response to the question “Which news organizations do you trust the most?” he replied, “I try to listen to a diverse outlet of news organizations, but FOX news is absolutely off the table. This is a racist and bigoted news outlet which shares more opinions than actual news.” His response to the question “In general, do you have confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the information you get from professional news outlets?” was “No. I seek out a multitude of sources and make my own determination from there.” A self-identified Democrat, his response to the question “In your view, which mainstream news outlets represent a greater and more objective mix of political views?” was “None.” In response to the question “Do you think that the news and commentary you get from the news media are one-sided and tend to favor one side at the expense of the other?” he replied, “Not generally. People choose where they get their news from, therefore they confirm their own biases.” His response to the question “Do you think there are any 'fake news' media outlets? Why might some media outlets be inclined to sensationalize or elevate certain stories over other stories?” was “Any news outlet that does not serve the interest of the people is fake news. Fox news is the worst of them all.” As harsh a critic of our news media as one could find in this Qualtrics survey!
• In response to the survey question “In your view, which mainstream news outlets represent a greater and more objective mix of political views?” an employed white 26-year-old single woman with an associate degree (participant #7) replied “No mainstream news outlets are unbiased!” This self-identified independent responded to the question “What kind of effect do you think our news media have on our elected political leaders?” with “News media either cover up or expose politicians depending on their own objectives. For example, CNN reports Trump ordering a coke (literally) but didn’t report on Obama dropping 26000+ bombs in 2016 alone.” She responded to the question “Which news organizations do you trust the most?” with “I use libertarian sources such as reason.com.” (Who are reason.com?) Question: “Do you think that the news and commentary you get from the news media are one-sided and tend to favor one side at the expense of the other?” Answer: “Absolutely. CNN is Democrat, Fox News is Republican. All of them cover what motivates their political party agenda.” Question: “Do you think there are any 'fake news' media outlets? Why might some media outlets be inclined to sensationalize or elevate certain stories over other stories?” Answer: “CNN and Fox News both make up or highly dramatize stories and choose not to cover some.” Question: “In general, do you have confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the information you get from professional news outlets?” Answer: “No, they are biased and most of the executives on those news outlets have ties to people in their corresponding political parties so their motivation is questionable.” Participant #7 is clearly in the anti-mainstream media corner.
• In response to the survey question “In your view, which mainstream news outlets represent a greater and more objective mix of political views?” an employed white 50-year-old single woman with an associate degree (participant #8) replied, “I’m not sure any do these days. Anything but Fox?” This self-identifying Democrat responded with a “Yes!” to the question “Do you think that the news and commentary you get from the news media are one-sided and tend to favor one side at the expense of the other?” Another doubting Thomas, for sure! Although laconic in her few replies, participant #8 is obviously not sitting on the fence when it comes to doubting the mainstream media.
Overall, the Qualtrics survey respondents paint a far from positive picture of the mass media that is not entirely different from the sharply critical one provided by the five one-on-one interviewees. Only three of the eight Qualtrics survey participants (#2, #4 and #5) expressed trust in mainstream news outlets such as NPR, Bloomberg or BBC. Just two Qualtrics survey participants (#2 and #4) said that BBC World News represents a greater and more objective mix of political views. And another two participants (#1 and #4) said practically the same thing about NPR. Most of the interviewees and survey respondents in this sample of mid-America are almost equally skeptical and distrustful of the information provided by our news conglomerates. Quite a few of them believe that the news media have only their own unprofessional and unethical journalistic practices to blame for the perceived lack of public confidence.
Conclusions. Along with the project's contextual, phronetic approach and inductive interpretive analysis, my puzzle-explication writing format of structuring the reported data around a “puzzle” seems to have paid off. My qualitative inquiry has attended not only to its stated objectives, priorities and approved research question, but also to the puzzle of the “fake news” controversy first mentioned in the introductory paragraph. While necessarily limited in scope and depth, the evidence appears to confirm (and perhaps even partly explain) the initially puzzling quantitative results of the 2017 Harvard–Harris Poll (quoted in the excerpt from The Hill article with which the introduction begins). That is why I hope that my iterative type of inquiry perhaps will amount to “practically significant research.” As such, it can potentially make a very modest scholarly contribution by providing a sense of practical urgency and deeper empathic insight and understanding to the important public issue at hand (which connects up with much larger political narratives and social problems). Any such “practically significant research” may catalyze change (catalytic validity?) in the long run by encouraging news providers to abandon their ideological prejudices, personal biases and groupthink mentality in favor of raising their professional and ethical standards in providing accurate, fair, reliable and balanced news and commentary. The mass media ought not be misused as a propaganda tool to manipulate public opinion by repeating ad infinitum useful lies and deceptions until they become the generally accepted “truth.” The controlled mainstream media's power to define and twist reality cultivates in the American people a distorted and false understanding of the world and themselves that can only lead to ignorance, prejudice and aggressive narrow-mindedness. Moreover, working to maintain total control over the way people think and behave can only make our corporate media and their pundits as discredited and disliked in the eyes of the public as our corrupt politicians and two major political parties. As one interviewee has implied, the reason why mid-America does not trust the mainstream media is because their news narratives seem designed to conceal and deceive, rather than inform and enlighten the public.
WORKS CITED
Baxter, Pamela, and Susan Jack (2008). “Qualitative Case Study Methodology: Study Design and Implementation for Novice Researchers.” The Qualitative Report 13(4), 544-559. Retrieved from http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol13/iss4/2.
Easley, Jonathan (2017). “Majority Says Mainstream Media Publishes Fake News.” The Hill (May 24). Retrieved from http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/334897-poll-majority-says-mainstream-media-publishes-fake-news. The Harvard–Harris Poll mentioned in this article is a collaboration of the Harvard Center for American Political Studies and The Harris Poll. This online survey of 2,006 registered voters was conducted between May 17 and May 20, 2017. The partisan breakdown is 36 percent Democrat, 32 percent Republican, 29 percent independent and 3 percent other. The poll used a methodology that does not produce a traditional margin of error.
Fischer, Sara (2018), “92% of Republicans Think Media Intentionally Reports Fake News.” Axios (June 27). The Axios/MonkeySurvey Poll conducted June 15-19, 2018, asked respondents the following survey question: “How often do you think news sources report news they know to be fake, false or purposely misleading? A lot/sometimes/rarely/never?” Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/trump-effect-92-percent-republicans-media-fake-news-9c1bbf70-0054-41dd-b506-0869bb10f08c.html.
Tracy, Sarah J. (2013). Qualitative Research Methods: Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact. Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
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