CNN The Most Trusted Name In News? New Poll Says Otherwise

A new poll found that CNN does have the highest percentage of trust among respondents, but a large conservative audience actively distrusts the cable news network. The Rush Limbaugh Show is the most distrusted news source in Pew’s survey, with Fox News in a close second (although Fox was the primary news source for the political right.) It turns out that when it comes to trust, the only thing that unites the left and right is British based reporting and the Wall Street Journal.

Naturally, political identity weighed heavily in the Pew Media Sources Poll, which asked respondents what media sources did they trust, and what did they distrust.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Americans are deeply divided on political issues, or at least politicians are extremely polarized. That political landscape has eroded trust in the media and divided the viewing public into their own news worlds.

Take Fox News as an example.

Out of respondents that identified themselves as “consistently conservative,” 88 percent said they trusted Fox; consistently liberal respondents distrusted Fox by about the same number, at 81 percent.

MSNBC, on the other hand, does not command the same loyalty from the left. Only 52 percent of consistently liberal respondents trust MSNBC, versus 75 percent of consistent conservatives that distrust the supposedly liberally biased cable news channel.

CNN fits in the middle-left. The majority of respondents with “mixed” political views and liberals said they trusted CNN, giving them the largest overall percentage of trusting viewers with 54 percent.

CNN’s key to winning viewer confidence may be their relative dedication to factual reporting. MSNBC is almost entirely opinion and commentary (about 85 percent of their content), Fox News is also mostly not news, only 45 percent of its content is factual reporting. The majority of CNN’s programming just keeps with the facts, although just barely; about 54 percent of its programming is reporting.

Still, conservatives aren’t impressed. The far right considered CNN the third most distrusted media source.

Is there anything that can bridge America’s vast political divide?

Apparently, the British can.

In terms of trust versus distrust, the Economist and the BBC did the best overall, even though they weren’t so well known. Nevertheless, consistently conservative respondents still had as much distrust as trust for the UK.

Overall only one news source had more trust responses than distrust responses from the entire political spectrum: The Wall Street Journal.

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