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The Economist: Donald Trump's attacks on the media may have backfired
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/07/30/donald-trumps-attacks-on-the-media-may-have-backfiredSo far, however, Mr Trump’s broadsides have failed to dent faith in his targets. On behalf of The Economist, during the past three years YouGov, a pollster, has asked a representative sample of Americans to rate large American news organisations on a scale from “very trustworthy” to “very untrustworthy”. (We calculate net trustworthiness on a scale of -100 to 100 from a weighted average of “very trustworthy” (100), “trustworthy” (50), “neither trustworthy or untrustworthy” (0), “untrustworthy” (-50) and “very untrustworthy” (-100).) From October 15th 2016, shortly before he was elected, to this month, confidence in Mr Trump’s two most frequently targeted newspapers, the New York Times and Washington Post, has actually grown. During the same period, trust in two media outlets that offer him reliably fawning coverage, Fox News and Breitbart, has withered.
This trend is not only a product of liberal readers flocking to publications criticised by the president they revile. Instead, trust in America’s mainstream print media has improved across the political spectrum. Unsurprisingly, people who said they would or did vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 now trust the Times and Post more, and Fox less, than they did two years ago. Yet even among people who support the president, net trust of Mr Trump’s bêtes noires has increased, albeit by much smaller amounts. Meanwhile, during the past two years, the New York Times’ monthly online readership has doubled to 130m. If anything is failing, it appears to be Mr Trump’s campaign to undermine trust in the press, not the Gray Lady.
This trend is not only a product of liberal readers flocking to publications criticised by the president they revile. Instead, trust in America’s mainstream print media has improved across the political spectrum. Unsurprisingly, people who said they would or did vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 now trust the Times and Post more, and Fox less, than they did two years ago. Yet even among people who support the president, net trust of Mr Trump’s bêtes noires has increased, albeit by much smaller amounts. Meanwhile, during the past two years, the New York Times’ monthly online readership has doubled to 130m. If anything is failing, it appears to be Mr Trump’s campaign to undermine trust in the press, not the Gray Lady.
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