In April 2018, Bright Line Watch conducted its fifth expert survey, and its third public survey, on democracy in the United States. Between April 9 and 22, we surveyed an expert sample of 935 political science faculty at American universities and a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults. Respondents in […] Read more »
Why Trump Supporters Don’t Mind His Lies
In his first 400 days in office, President Trump made more than 2,400 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post. … Wittingly or not, Mr. Trump’s representatives have used a subtle psychological strategy to defend his falsehoods: They encourage people to reflect on how the falsehoods could have […] Read more »
Why Trump Is Winning and the Press Is Losing
There is alive in the land an organized campaign to discredit the American press. This campaign is succeeding. Its roots are long. For decades, the Republican coalition has tried to hang together by hating on elites who claim to know things, like: “What is art?” Or: “What should college students […] Read more »
How Trump thrives in ‘news deserts’
President Donald Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media may be rooted in statistical reality: An extensive review of subscription data and election results shows that Trump outperformed the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in counties with the lowest numbers of news subscribers, but didn’t do nearly as well in areas […] Read more »
A new study suggests fake news might have won Donald Trump the 2016 election
President Trump has said repeatedly that Russian interference didn’t matter in the 2016 presidential campaign, and he has suggested — wrongly — that the intelligence and law enforcement communities have said the same. His overriding fear seems to be that Russian interference and the “fake news” it promoted would undermine […] Read more »
‘Fake News’ Threat to Media; Editorial Decisions, Outside Actors at Fault
The news about “fake news” is not good, according to the Monmouth University Poll. Large majorities of the American public believe that traditional media outlets engage in reporting fake news and that outside sources are actively trying to plant fake stories in the mainstream media. When it comes to the […] Read more »