How much do you trust the press? When it comes to the press recent polls have shown that our trust in the press being unbiased and truthful is waning. An article written by the Daily Express showed alarming figures. According to them, trust in its journalists has plunged by more than a third in just 17 years. Matt Goodwin a top Polling expert wrote on Twitter/X: "I trust BBC journalists to tell the truth' 2003 81 percent, 2008 61 percent, 2012 57 percent, 2018 50 percent, 2020 47 percent." This is YouGov data. There is an interesting web group called: mediabiasfactcheck.com. They offer lookups on all major media publishers and claim themselves to be unbiased. In addittion to showing the country, media type, and traffic they put each outlet into four important categories. Bias Rating Factual Reporting Country Freedom Rating Credibility Rating. So just for example we looked up the BBC, Britains Broadcasting Aunty. Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER Factual Reporting: HIGH Country: United Kingdom Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: TV Station Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY and randomly chose The Guardian which comes up as: Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER Factual Reporting: MIXED Country: United Kingdom Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Newspaper Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: MEDIUM CREDIBILITY The articles also show a short history of the publication, how it is funded and an analysis of its bias. There are also statemenst such as: They utilize emotionally loaded headlines with examples. There is also an analysis of the readership. In the case of the Guardian there was a longer list of failed fact checks, whereas the BBC were only caught out once. As a member you can also contribute to their analysis such as rating their bias but like all polls this will always be subject to what type of person is interested. It may not please its readers but the Daily mail comes away with a ghastly reutation. Questionable Reasoning: Right, Propaganda, Conspiracy, Some Fake News, Numerous Failed Fact Checks Bias Rating: RIGHT Factual Reporting: LOW Country: United Kingdom Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: Newspaper Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: LOW CREDIBILITY Even suspected of fake news but at least according to the credibility rating nobody seems to take what they publish seriously. If you want to read unbiased honest stuff? Well according to them you can hardly beat Reuters: Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED Factual Reporting: VERY HIGH Country: United Kingdom MBFC's Country Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE Media Type: News Agency Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY France's "le Figaro" came away well too with no failed fact checks in the last five years. More than interesting: Le Figaro was founded as a satirical weekly in 1826, taking its name and motto from Le Mariage de Figaro, the 1778 play by Pierre Beaumarchais that poked fun at privilege. Who would have thought that? We were also surprised (why?) to learn that Italy's Corriere della Sera, one of the oldest but also most read Papers in Italy was amazingly highly rated. Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED How do we know we can even trust these people?. There is probably no sure way because the amount of information available is so huge that nobody can forge through it and evaluate every headline and every article. How are countries rated? They explain for example: According to Reporters without Borders, the "UK remains one of the worst-ranked Western European countries in the World Press Freedom Index, largely due to a heavy-handed approach towards the press, often in the name of national security." From reading many of their appraisals, we do feel that they are trustworthy mainly because they publish their reasoning behind their evaluations. but of course we need to recall the famous latin saying Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will guard us against the Guardians All in all the major European publcations seem to come away quite well.

Trust Values Table

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