{"id":85220,"date":"2025-03-03T11:11:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T17:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=85220"},"modified":"2025-03-03T11:11:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T17:11:59","slug":"fhsu-students-weigh-in-on-record-low-trust-in-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=85220","title":{"rendered":"FHSU students weigh in on record-low trust in media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By RORY MOORE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiger Media Network<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent Gallup poll <\/a>showed that 31% of Americans have a \u201cgreat deal\u201d or \u201cfair amount\u201d of confidence in the mass media to report the news \u201cfully, accurately and fairly,\u201d a record low since the analytics organization began asking the question in 1972. This comes as many view an increased polarization in political news while others perceive what they see as biased commentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that same poll, 54% of Democrats expressed trust in the media, while 27% of independents and 12% of Republicans expressed the same.  The percentage among independents is tied with the record low in 2022. Younger people aged 18-29 were also shown to have low trust, with 26% compared to 43% among people 65 and older. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fort Hays students shared their perspectives on how they perceive the media and what contributes to the historically low trust among Americans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophomore Cade Becker believes most people distrust the media based on what they see as dishonest or misleading to fit an agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a big mix-up of politics and media,\u201d he said. \u201cPolitics and media have become too intertwined. There\u2019s this over sensationalization that has made media less trustworthy since they\u2019re more for the bait, clicks, and likes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Becker singled out sites on both political spectrums of engaging in sensationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are left-leaning sites that you see antagonizing politicians like [President Donald] Trump. They scrutinize and put him under a microscope, and then there are Republican ones that do the same thing,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople who watch Fox News or CNN see these extremists, and they think that\u2019s what most people in that other party think. They try to create this hasty generalization out of one person. That\u2019s something I\u2019ve noticed a lot of them do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senior Andrew Scott thinks people are fed up with receiving misleading headlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA large portion of it is we\u2019re told one thing, and it turns out to be a completely other thing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019ve been lied to, and it happens over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott attributes the little trust people have to their continual following of certain outlets over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBack in the day, the news used to be a lot easier to trust,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething changed along historical lines, and it was no longer trustworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result of that distrust, many Americans have turned their attention away from mainstream media and given it to alternative forms of media like podcasts and independent outlets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI, for one, am fully behind podcasts,\u201d Scott said. \u201cI think it\u2019s great that they\u2019re not being financially compensated for, nor are they bought out by corporations trying to push their agenda. From my experience listening to podcasts, I think they\u2019re genuine people having a conversation and getting to the bottom of whatever they have their opinions on.  Some of them are wrong, but that should be left to the listener to make their own decision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott cited the Joe Rogan Experience as his favorite podcast while mentioning X, formerly known as Twitter, as trustworthy for its pro-free speech policy.  He does, however, try to fact-check his sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI usually look up multiple sources on the internet,\u201d he said. \u201cIf most of them say something that is true, I go with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other students like Junior Shealynn Rasmussen choose to avoid media altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t follow a lot of media,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to stay out of the whole political realm of it. I follow it every now and then since I have a lot of classes that relate to the whole political side of things. So, I\u2019ve gotten into it more in the last year just to get by.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophomore Ainsley Green sees people turned off by abundant media bias and polarization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not getting all the facts,\u201d she said. \u201cWith all the craziness happening in our country, there\u2019s a lack of trust in authority figures and other people in general.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She holds mixed feelings about the rising reliance on alternative media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt depends on the situation,\u201d Green said. \u201cYou should try to educate yourself, and podcasts are a good way to start, but you should be fact-checking information and making sure you\u2019re getting it from multiple sources and not just one source. You should be using multiple different platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Green seeks out information directly from government sites after being informed by others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI get most of my news from TikTok,\u201d she said. \u201cThen, I go online, do my own research and see what\u2019s true. With a lot of the executive orders, there were people on TikTok explaining it, and I read the executive orders myself to see what they actually said.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By RORY MOORE Tiger Media Network A recent Gallup poll showed that 31% of Americans have a \u201cgreat deal\u201d or \u201cfair amount\u201d of confidence in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":85221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,3398,11,3570],"tags":[16178,16177,15700],"class_list":["post-85220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-news","category-campus-news","category-news","category-politics-news","tag-media-bias","tag-news-media","tag-rory-moore"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/newspapers-444448_1280.jpg?fit=1280%2C848","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85220"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85223,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85220\/revisions\/85223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/85221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}