A new Rasmussen survey released Tuesday reveals only 30 percent of likely voters in this country trust the political news they are getting, down significantly from the 37 percent in July 2021, while 52 percent do not trust the political news and 19 percent simply aren’t sure.
For the media which advertises itself as “fair” and “unbiased,” that’s a bad sign heading into what is likely to become a heated, and likely nasty at times, 2024 campaign for Congress and the White House.
According to Rasmussen, 59 percent of voters agree with former President Donald Trump that the media are “truly the enemy of the people.” After release of the 2019 Mueller Report, which found no evidence of “Russian collusion” the establishment media had hyped, Trump infamously tweeted “Fake News is truly the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Thirty-five percent of survey respondents “strongly agree” with the statement, while only 23 percent “strongly disagree.”
The survey of 1,002 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on May 16-18, 2023 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Perhaps the most telling revelation of the new Rasmussen poll is that 66 percent of Republicans, 50 percent of Independents and even 39 percent of Democrats “believe media coverage of politics favors Democrats.”
Meanwhile, 30 percent of Democrats, five percent of Republicans and 21 percent of Independents think the media’s political coverage is “mostly neutral and balanced.”
Just as bad, only 23 percent of Republicans, 21 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Independents think the media’s political coverage favors Republicans.
Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Republicans, 44% of Democrats and 56% of unaffiliated voters at least somewhat agree that the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen’s poll apparently didn’t ask specific questions about the public’s perception about the media’s reporting on guns. But many gun owners believe there exists a long-standing, almost institutional media bias against gun rights and favoring restrictive gun control. Considering the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms, comes right after the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech and the press, this may seem hideously short-sighted.
But take a look at media coverage of gun control, including groups that want to ban gun ownership. The media typically portrays such groups as “gun safety” advocates, while describing gun control legislation as “gun reform.” The term “gun violence” permeates news reports about violent crime or homicides involving firearms, but nowhere does anyone find references to “knife violence” or “blunt instrument” violence, despite the fact that in any given year, the number of people stabbed or bludgeoned to death typically exceeds the number of people murdered with rifles of any kind, including modern semiautomatic rifles, which are routinely, and incorrectly, called “assault weapons” by the press.
For example, newspapers in Pennsylvania covering the current gun control push by Democrats in the Legislature are calling the legislation “gun reform” bills, including the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Elsewhere around the country, the media has adopted the gun control lobby’s lexicon, referring to the gun prohibition lobby—which many in the Second Amendment community believe accurately portrays their intention because they wish to ban modern semi-auto rifles and pistols—as “gun safety” groups.
