You can often hear Donald Trump talk about the “fake news”, but according to a new survey, half of all high school students think he could be right.
High school is a time in many people’s lives where they start to define who they are and their experiences and lessons shape them for the rest of their lives. What does it say when half of those students don’t trust the media?
The Knight Foundation has been conducting a national survey of nearly 10,000 high school students and 500 teachers for the last 12 years and this year’s results show a major shift in news media consumption and trust.
In the study, 49 percent of all high school students and 51 percent of teachers say they have little or no trust in the media. They do not think the news is fair or accurate and as a group are consuming less all together.
Local TV news is down 16 percent from 2016 to a dismal 14 percent this year. Cable news is even worse. 28 percent of the responses said they watched cable news in 2016 and now it is only 12 percent.
Even the number of people using digital outlets to get their news fell to 46 percent of students. What did go up was the number of people trusting citizen journalism. In 2016, the study reported that 26 percent trusted citizens posting content about a story more than any traditional news outlet. That number grew to 40 percent of students this year.
The trust for the mainstream media is losing the youth and has lost the adults. In a recent poll, 72 percent of adults believe the news can’t be trusted.
Considering the trust in the media was once around 75 percent during the Watergate scandal and reporting by the Washington Post, in just over 40 years that number has reversed.
Do you trust the media? Let us know in the comments below.
