'Trusted' news source
© University of Missouri
Maybe it's the accent. When it comes to news, Americans deemed British media more trustworthy than their U.S. counterparts in a world where "fake news" has emerged as an ideological battle cry and less of an oxymoron.

The most trusted news source in the U.S. is The Economist, a weekly magazine published in the U.K., according to a recent survey from the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute.


Comment: If this survey is accurate then we're already off to a horrible start! Perhaps if the survey takers got their information from a few independent sources instead of the Elite-owned and edited The Economist, they'd have a much better and more objective grasp on world events. A few recent articles indicate that the rag should not, by any stretch of the imagination, be "the most trusted news source in the U.S.":

The Economist can't handle the facts about RT

Veteran journalist: NYT, Reuters, Economist reporters self-censor news about Israel so as not to be 'savagely targeted'

Propaganda Alert! Economist Magazine Wants ISIS Spared in Mosul, To Attack Syria


The second-most reliable is public television, followed by Reuters and BBC. Two U.S. nonprofit outlets, NPR and PBS, came in at fifth and sixth, while the U.K.'s The Guardian clinched the seventh spot. The U.S.-based Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News rounded out the top 10 trusted names in journalism.


Comment: Another bunch of winners. And what do they all most likely have in common? They are all basically under the control, and pay, of intelligence agencies.

Modern Operation Mockingbird: "Everyone Who Disagrees with Me Is a Russian Propagandist"


The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp. NWS, -0.34%NWSA, -0.91% the parent of MarketWatch.

At the other extreme, Occupy Democrats - a political website with a self-claimed agenda of counterbalancing the Republican Tea Party - won the dubious honor of being the most untrustworthy in the nation. Buzzfeed, Breitbart and Infowars also scored dismally on the trust-meter.

The results were based on a survey of more than 8,000 people conducted by 28 media organizations in the U.S. Participation was voluntary but respondents tended to reside near the news outlets that made the questionnaire available on their websites, and leaned toward the liberal side of the political spectrum.


Comment: In other words, most of the respondents probably live in bigger cities that are more or less 'blue states' - places with populations that mostly voted for Hillary Clinton, and buy into her brand of "progressive", neo-liberal, and ultimately, neo-connish politics. One wonders what this survey would have looked like if it was better represented by the rest of the U.S. - like those areas of the country that heard Trump's message and voted for him?

One reason (of many) that at least half the country voted for the Donald:

Study shows Clinton lost because PA, WI, and MI have high casualty rates and saw her as pro-war - UPDATE


Political orientation chart
© University of Missouri
The survey also showed that politically liberal respondents were more trusting than conservatives, while Caucasians were more likely than non-whites to have confidence in the media.

As the chart below illustrates, the level of trust remained fairly steady among people who identify themselves as liberals or moderates regardless of their age; among conservatives, trust dropped off sharply with age. At the same time, financial support for the media had a strong correlation with age.
Age chart
© University of Missouri
The debate over trust and journalism has taken on a whole different tone in recent months as President Donald Trump has vociferously attacked mainstream media as "fake news" in response to unfavorable coverage.


Comment: "Unfavorable coverage" towards Trump is a nice spin on what passes for corporate journalism these days. The egregious level of lies, attack and slander against Trump are beyond the pale - and Trump's calling these mainstream media outlets "fake news" is rather understating the problem.


Ironically, Trump was also viewed as untrustworthy, with a credibility score that was better than the internet but worse than social-media sources.

[This story was originally published Aug. 3.]