Majority of Americans Believe Mainstream Media Report Fake News

According to a new poll, most Americans believe that traditional news outlets are guilty as charged.

The survey, conducted at the beginning of March and released on Wednesday by Monmouth University, found that 60 percent of Americans believe that traditional mainstream media outlets report fake news and 40 percent of them believe that it is done so to advance a specific agenda.

When questioned about nontraditional online news outlets, 80 percent of Americans believe that they report fake news either regularly or occasionally. Additionally, 54 percent believe that false reports are published deliberately with an agenda.

“A plurality of respondents said that they trusted news from ABC News, Fox News and MSNBC more than they trusted news from President Donald Trump,” Politico reports. But, “Republicans were far more likely to trust Trump over ABC News and MSNBC, and about 44 percent of Republican respondents said they trusted Trump and Fox News equally.”

Republicans were more skeptical of both mainstream and alternative news outlets overall, with 55 percent believing that fake news is reported deliberately by traditional media – compared to 41 percent of independents and 24 percent of Democrats.

Regarding the president of the United States, 80 percent of those surveyed believe that his relationship with the media is worse than previous administrations’, and 58 percent responded that the battle between Trump and the media is hurting his image. On the other hand, 51 percent believe that the battle is hurting the image of the media.

There is a t-shirt currently on sale at the Trump Tower gift shop which reads “shut the fake media up.”

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) March 27, 2017

On Tuesday, the California Political Cyberfraud Abatement Act, a bill to make it illegal to publish fake news about a candidate or ballot measure, was tossed out after outrage from free speech advocates.

“At a time when political leaders are promoting ‘alternative facts’ and branding unflattering reporting as ‘fake news,’ we don’t think it’s a good idea to give the government more power to punish speech,” Dave Maas, an investigative researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Washington Times.