Trust me, I’m a journalist

By THE DATA TEAM

ON JANUARY 17th Donald Trump will announce the inaugural winners of his “Fake News Awards”, presented to the “most biased and corrupt” organisation in America’s mainstream media. Since he took office nearly a year ago, Mr Trump has waged a war of words against what he perceives as unfair treatment by the news elite. His principal targets are the “failing” New York Times and “fake news” CNN.

A poll by Pew Research, a think-tank based in Washington, demonstrates how successful Mr Trump has been in souring his fans’ attitudes towards the press. For a number of years Pew has asked a representative sample of Americans whether news organisations’ criticism of political leaders primarily keeps them in check or, conversely, prevents them from doing their jobs. In 2016 Republicans and Democrats were in broad agreement: around 75% thought that criticism was constructive for a healthy government. But by last year Mr Trump had created a chasm in that sentiment: 90% of Democrats, but just 42% of Republicans, said that criticism by journalists of political leaders was useful. Republican voters are now more likely to disagree with Democratic voters about whether news reporting is biased. About nine-tenths of Republicans believe the news media favour one political party over the other, compared with just over half of Democrats.

Mr Trump’s campaign against the Fourth Estate marks one more way in which he is an outlier among heads of state. Even though all leaders in countries with a free press have gripes with the media’s coverage of their governments, people who support the party in power generally tend to have a more positive view of journalists. A new survey by Pew conducted in 38 countries asked whether respondents believed news organisations covered different political parties fairly. In all but two of them, people who backed the current government also expressed a more favourable view of the press. That pattern is unsurprising in authoritarian states, whose leaders often compel or coerce news organisations to produce friendly coverage that would please supporters of those regimes. But it holds in competitive democracies as well. The only exceptions were America under Mr Trump and Israel, another country with a liberal tradition, a vigorous press and a firmly conservative ruling party.

By undermining trust in the media, Mr Trump may be endangering both his own agenda and those of his successors. Among the countries surveyed by Pew, positive views of the press and the government move in almost perfect lockstep: the places where respondents say they are satisfied with the media, above all in sub-Saharan Africa, are those where rulers are trusted to do the right thing. The converse is also true, as South America brings up the rear on both measures. This link does not guarantee that declining confidence in the media causes or even foreshadows a future reduction in trust in the government. Nonetheless, it should give Mr Trump cause for concern that the American public’s already low faith in their leader may have yet more room to fall.