Battered by waves of Covid-19 and confusion over shifting government messages about it, Americans’ confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) declined in January with drops both among groups of Democrats/Democratic-leaning independents and Republicans/Republican-leaning independents, according to January survey data from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of […] Read more »
2022 Edelman Trust Barometer: Government and media fuel a vicious cycle of distrust
The 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that business holds onto its position as the most trusted institution, with even greater expectations due to government’s failure to lead during the pandemic. By an average of five-to-one margin, respondents in the 28 countries surveyed want business to play a larger role on […] Read more »
Military Brass, Judges Among Professions at New Image Lows
Gallup’s annual rating of the honesty and ethics of various professions finds five of the 22 occupations rated this year at new lows in public esteem. While the majority of Americans continue to believe military officers have high ethics (61%), the score is down 10 percentage points since it was […] Read more »
The immovable Republican Party and ‘ink-blot politics’
Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It was an effort to stop the procedural certification of a presidential election that Joe Biden won and Trump lost. The mob was egged on by conspiracies and Trump’s lies about that 2020 election. Those are facts. […] Read more »
Free Expression in America Post-2020
Free expression and the freedom of speech are cornerstones of American democracy. Yet the interpretation of the First Amendment continues to be a flashpoint in the 21st century as the nation debates how to apply these rights to our society. For the 2021 “Free Expression in America Post-2020” report, Knight […] Read more »
CBS News poll: Is social media making things easier or harder?
Social media has been in the spotlight these days, drawing questions about its role on January 6, and in politics more widely. Most Americans, from their perspective, report a mix of effects: they call it at once an informative source of news, saying it gives them a voice, but also […] Read more »