In ten years, Americans’ confidence in television and print news crashed to an all-time low, according to the latest Gallup poll.
After mainstream media coverage of the massacre in Orlando on Sunday largely failed to dig further after multiple witnesses came forward suggesting more than one attacker was involved, that lack of trust seems logical.
While trust in media crashed by 10 percent — newspapers hit their lowest confidence rating since 2007, at 20 percent — other institutions fared significantly worse.
Confidence in banks, which tumbled dramatically following the financial crisis of 2008, plummeted by 22 percent — the largest loss of any institution Gallup surveyed — from 49 percent in 2006, to just 27 percent ten years later.
Virtually no one has faith in Congress anymore, as the notorious legislative body nose-dived by 10 percent — to a paltry 9 percent.
“Congress has the ignominious distinction of being the only institution sparking little or no confidence in a majority of Americans,” Gallup noted.
Both the Supreme Court and organized labor experienced only minor drops in public confidence.
Overall trust in institutions fell by 6 percent over the last decade, and though the aforementioned results match the cynicism so permeating the United States in 2016, several results might come as a surprise.
Despite endlessly questionable foreign policy maneuvers, confidence in the presidency grew by 3 points — from 33 percent in 2006, to 36 percent now.
On the same note, Americans’ trust of the military neither lost nor gained, instead remaining the most positively-viewed institution on the list, hands down — at an overwhelming 73 percent. Theoretically, the public’s response might reflect the enormously successful ‘Support the Troops’ propaganda campaign, or even a perception the military acts as a defensive body, though such details were beyond the scope of Gallup’s poll.
Perhaps most alarming to anyone paying even cursory attention to the epidemic of police killings and incidents of brutality and violence, over the past decade public confidence in police remains comparatively high — falling just 2 percentage points to 56 percent.
Congruous with growing awareness the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation on the planet — with 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prison population — confidence in the criminal justice system fell 2 points to 23 percent.
Public schools lost ground, possibly due to ongoing contention over the Common Core program, plunging from 37 percent confidence rating to 30 percent in ten years.
Americans also lost faith in faith. Overall confidence in church or organized religion slid significantly over the decade, from 52 percent to just 41 percent.
As Gallup summarized,
Americans clearly lack confidence in the institutions that affect their daily lives: the schools responsible for educating the nation’s children; the houses of worship that are expected to provide spiritual guidance; the banks that are supposed to protect Americans’ earnings; the U.S. Congress elected to represent the nation’s interests; and the news media that claims it exists to keep them informed.
Perhaps, as has been suggested by countless activists and independent media outlets, including The Free Thought Project, the U.S. would be far better off if everyone turned off corporate media for good, stopped validating the broken system by voting for either ‘evil’ this November, and began to find solutions outside the narrative provided by the government apparently no one trusts.
Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.
THE 1ST. & 2ND. AMENDMENTS ARE A REAL BOTHER TO THE WHITE RICH & FASCIST NEOCONS.
FIGHT TO THE DEATH TO PRESERVE THEM COME ELECTION/TAKE-OVER DAY.
The Orlando thing was staged. Lots of good videos now on youtube showing crisis actors. YOU know why they’re doing it.
you mean vile…jews
Whatever. Those statistics from Gallup are fabrication, lies, and really, those numbers mean absolutely nothing. nada, zilch.
I can’t even be bothered to read this entire stupid article. Seriously waste of time looking at those ‘polls’.
Wow, you media collaborators really got the butthurt over this, huh? Well maybe if you Wall Street presstitute scumbags would report the facts instead of lying to promote government agendas, you wouldn’t be looked upon like the Vichy traitors that you are…
FAIL. I am not your bogeyman. Every statement you made is incorrect if you meant that to pertain to me.
You’re defending the government’s point of view. The government wants to enslave me, which makes it my enemy. The friend of my enemy is also my enemy.
Every statement I made IS correct, you’re just a coward who can’t admit that you’re a government bootlicker…
“Wow, you media collaborators”…perhaps you mean Gallup?
Polls are taken by those who want to influence the sheeple’s thinking.
True that! Unless great pains are taken to NOT ‘lead’ with the questions OR with answer choices, polls always skew truth because questions are skewed in favor of something or other or choices to answer are limited to what the pollsters want to show a percentage on. It’s all junk social engineering trickery. I despise those dumb phone call surveys who refuse to allow you to answer anything OTHER THAN choices offered. They usually do that nonsense with political candidates. I hang up on them.
Leaving polls aside, what’s your overall opinion of the corporate controlled Main Stream Media, Congress and the other institutions written about in this article? Polls aside, do you believe the American people’s faith in their institutions has been and is dwindling? Or is there no way of roughly gauging it?
My opinion is that our entire modern society is twisted so badly from any semblance of truth and reality that you can grab whatever topic you want and find it corrupted to the point of uselessness. Every institution, political office, corporatized news outlets, and even some “truthers” are also complicit. Churches are apostate and “men of God” are pedophiles, thieves, con-men or whatever. They preach an ear-tickling gospel that benefits only hellfires while they pad their own bank accounts with donations and offerings. 🙁 Scientists are bald-faced liars also and have zero credibility because fantasy is not science. Most are atheists and that is the height of stupid. I cannot believe anything falling from the mouth of one who believes that we evolved from rock soup jazzed up with a few amino acids. Just read with a critical eye some of their persistent nonsense and corporate-paid research. Not truth. Agenda to get YOU TO BELIEVE what benefits them.
However, I do believe many are ‘waking up’ and their distrust is quite warranted. It is foolish to believe a known liar. I think this simple principle is what is being touted here. As for numbers to generate a percentage, that is not going to happen because I am not alone in my distancing from this modern ‘society’. The best way to generate your own numbers to go out and ASK PEOPLE. Strike up casual friendly conversations through out your day with strangers. I do that. That is why I say that I know of NO ONE who supports Hillary Clinton. I’ve asked so many people I’ve lost count: older Christian white men, younger men, rural blacks, poor people, well off people, LGBT people, hetero, moms, older sisters my mail carrier, those at gas stations, in Walmarts, at the hardware store and at the farmers market and so on. A pretty diverse section of labels. Everyone HATES THAT VILLAIN. Yet our media keeps telling us Hillary has supporters. She does, those already in the halls of power who do not vote and never get around people like me because I am just a nobody living out in ‘fly-over’ country. I’ll stick with my own polled results from people with a face and real flesh and blood and not something off the Internet that could be a bot or algorithm or some other digital deception.
So yeah, all this is just idiotic games to keep on keeping on this ugly status quo that benefits only a select few. These polls tell more about why they were taken than the results they intend to show.
it does not matter what is in the book or the amendment, because the RKM and that is OBAMA’S controllers, they don’t respect America, the world knows that the American people are really trying to wake up, so we must give them a chance, and I know that there are American’s out there that know that their military are killing innocent Civilians everywhere they go, and that is why the US government want to get World War Three started before all of their people wake up big time.
I am still having arguments with morons who believed the church shooting actually took place!!!!! Now I’m going to have to argue with them on this play acting with phony victims. Geesh….will they EVER WAKE UP?
No. They will have a heart attack over who’s using which toilet however.
1970 for me but better late than never for the rest of you.
Great, glad to hear it. The MSM is a bunch of fools follwoing the scripts/narratives they have been given by the established ‘special interest’ ie; gold collar scum owners.
Vaccines – nothing short of slow death.
GMO – another weapon of slow death – yet te FDA is willing to shove it down our throats. Ban this or that but not GMO crap.
Chemtrails being totally ignored by the EPA, which this same bungling agency killed the Animas river in Colorado.
Perpetual oil wars – being sold as keeping the various buggie men away from the Usurped States.
Turn off the boob tube and get off the couch.
The way the MSM is handling the Orlando mass murder is blowing back in their faces.
33
People have no faith in any current form of recognized authority and yet, every day, we give up our own sovereignty to them. Why is that? Society as a whole suffers from Stockholm Syndrome.
Authoritarian Followers Syndrome.
You have a bunch of parasites running your country and they keep you under control by fear and their robot police force who do not have brains to think.