Trust in Media 2022: Where Americans get their news and who they trust for information

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Americans of opposing political parties are sharply divided on how much they trust the news reported by national media organizations, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll.

YouGov asked 1,500 Americans where they get their news from and how much they trust a variety of prominent media organizations and news anchors. The poll, conducted from March 26 – 29, shows that while Americans are more likely to trust than distrust many prominent news sources, there are very few organizations that are trusted by more than a small proportion of Americans on both sides of the political aisle. CONTINUED

Linley Sanders, YouGov

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Elon Musk’s buy-in to Twitter is not top of mind for most, but for the very online it is a major development

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New snap public opinion research conducted by Ipsos finds that the majority of Americans are not familiar with Elon Musk’s recent purchase of significant amounts of Twitter stock, making him the social media company’s largest single shareholder. …

However, among heavy Twitter users (defined as daily or more), awareness is much higher, with two-thirds (65%) saying they are familiar with the purchase. A plurality of the “very online” also believe that Musk will “cause Twitter to allow greater free speech on the platform” (40%) and “improve the quality of discussion on the platform” (40%). CONTINUED

Ipsos

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From Schwarzenegger to Oz, GOP celebrities in politics

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There is plenty of buzz these days about celebrities running for political office — and about former President Donald Trump’s affinity for athletes and entertainers. …

While Republicans have ranted over the years about Hollywood, Jane Fonda and the coastal elites’ alleged contempt for Middle America, the GOP has had its own fascination with celebrities. …

Every cycle seems to bring with it more celebrities, folks with some name identification but little political experience. In fact, entertainers and athletes have been running for years — and most of them have been Republicans. CONTINUED

Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call

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The QAnon catchphrases that took over the Jackson hearings

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Republican senators questioning Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at her Supreme Court nomination hearing didn’t explicitly mention QAnon or its putative oracle, Q. They didn’t mention the child sex trafficking ring run by a global cabal of Democratic politicians, financial, media and Hollywood elites, medical establishment professionals and the satanic pedophile Hillary Clinton. They didn’t mention the Storm, the day these cabalists will be rounded up and executed. And they didn’t mention QAnon’s North Star, former president Donald Trump, who is secretly dismantling the pedophile ring.

They didn’t have to. QAnon, a sprawling conspiracy theory, is built on nods and winks, which has allowed it to move from the fringes to the center of American politics without toppling the mainstream conservative politicians who are courting its adherents. CONTINUED

Donald Moynihan (Georgetown), Washington Post

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A Seven-Year Stretch of Elevated Environmental Concern

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For the seventh straight year, U.S. public concern about the quality of the environment is near its two-decade high, with 44% of Americans worrying “a great deal” about it. The rest are about evenly divided between those worrying “a fair amount” (27%) versus “only a little” or “not at all” (28%). …

Consistent with their party’s strong focus on environmental issues, including global warming, Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to harbor substantial concern about the environment, 56% versus 24%, respectively. However, bucking the typical pattern of political independents’ views falling midway between Republicans’ and Democrats’, independents (50%) today are nearly as likely as Democrats to say they worry a great deal about the environment, leaving Republicans as the distinct outlier. CONTINUED

Lydia Saad, Gallup

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Book bans move to center stage in the red-state education wars

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The escalating red-state efforts to ban more books mark a new stage in the struggle to control the educational experience of America’s kaleidoscopically diverse younger generations. …

Though battles over access to controversial titles traditionally have been fought district by district, and even school by school, Republican-controlled states including Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas are now pushing statewide rules that make it easier for critics to remove books they dislike from school libraries in every community. …

To the conservatives pushing this agenda, these new restrictions on libraries — like the parallel red-state laws limiting certain discussions in the classroom — are a means of protecting parental rights. … But to a wide array of civil rights, civil liberties and free expression groups, these restrictions represent an effort to enshrine the values of one particular group of parents — conservative Whites — over the priorities and experiences of an increasingly diverse society in which kids of color now compose a clear majority of the public school student body nationwide. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, CNN

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