this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
197 points (98.0% liked)

Mildly Interesting

22139 readers
475 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Source: Pew Research

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 18 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I think one of the scariest parts here is how only one news source cracked 50% for Republicans. That indicates a rejection of the concept of news

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 11 hours ago

I think it's more that they reject information / knowledge / learning. That's why they're so prone to disinformation, grift, and conspiracy theories.

[–] tabarnaski@sh.itjust.works 34 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

The most striking thing in this graphic is that Republicans don't trust anything except Fox and Joe Rogan. Shows the lack of critical thinking imho.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 10 points 18 hours ago

Even Rogan didn't hit a third. That's nute

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 19 hours ago

I'm really surprised they omitted OAN, the news source for America's most critical thinking challenged.

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 58 points 1 day ago (6 children)

The trust in Fox News is SO disheartening. It's almost completely sensationalist propaganda.

I'm surprised NPR has low trust rates from both parties. I can feel a liberal bias, their long-form stories are excellent, but they do try to present both sides which probably makes some liberals unhappy.

[–] riskable@programming.dev 58 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Fox News admitted under oath in a court of law that they intentionally mislead their audiences with bullshit in order to push an agenda.

After that happened, Fox News should've been either forced to shut down or their audiences should've walked away in shame.

Instead, Fox News audience: WE WANT MORE OF THAT!

I think they should have just been told they cannot use the term news. They could use the term Knews if they like. Like Krab for News

If the just went with Fox Entertainment, that's fine as well. But if the information you are putting out there you are saying your viewers know isn't necessarily factual, it shouldn't fall under news. The Onion Im sure would be fine with BREAKING KNEWS

I mean the answer is really obvious. Fox and right-wing news outlets in general are designed to elicit strong emotional responses with the stories that they run and how they run them. It is, without exaggeration, literally - in the classical sense of the term “literally” (fuck I hate that I have to specify that now) - the daily hour(s) of hate. Strong emotions elicit the release of dopamine. This is why it “feels good” to many people.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 14 points 21 hours ago

I took the results a bit differently.

First, I ignored the dislike slices. Who's watching sources they distrust? Nobody, so that's personal bias, IMO.

Now, look at the Trust slices. Other than FoxNews, no news source really breaks 25% for the Repubs. They just don't seem to follow any source. If they did, they'd trust someone. So half watch FoxNews, and only a quarter watch anything else.

For the lefties, half the sources have 30-60% trust. That is a lot more sources getting regular eyes and ears on them. Something like NPR getting less high reviews is likely just less listeners as it's a bit "drier" news and a bit "both sidesey" due to it being public media. The dislike for it is only 3%, tied for the lowest dislike. Counterpoint is Newsmax for the left. Really low like and dislike because why would a liberal ever watch that?

[–] relativestranger@feddit.nl 4 points 1 day ago

all the magats here are glued to fox 'news'. many even pay the $100+ a month for cable or satellite and literally never change the channel from it.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

but they do try to present both sides which probably makes some liberals unhappy.

I’ll tell you why they lost me. In the run-up to the Iraq War II, the GeeDubz administration was obviously pushing bullshit. Like - everyone who wasn’t already subsumed into the Fox News talk radio hivemind knew - with very very little-to-no doubt, they were lying about WMDs. Outright lying - not “wrong” - outright lying.

They had a secret meeting to plan this war before Sept 11, and now they were hell bent to do it. But, because this was pre-trump, they needed to at least snow everybody under enough to make it look “legitimate”.

NPR ran every bullshit lie straight up as if it were true - and, listen, everybody knew; everybody from the CIA down to Joe from Joe’s Bar and Grill knew - it was absolute garbage BS. But there they were promoting the lies just like Fox News, only with a little twist - a little “critics say” coda at the end, a totally useless nod.

GeeDubz wasn’t doing press conferences then. Like at all. For a year, I think. Anyway, he’s finally going to do one. Several major networks are going to be allowed one question each. NPR is one of them. The day arrives, we all listen in to see what flimsy crooked tacked-on part of their insane plan they’ll work to expose. The question comes.

It was the most mealy, softball, worthless question imaginable. NPR had sent Juan Williams to ask it. I think he’s still lying for Fox News where he went several years later.

That, and NPR outright refusing to call “enhanced interrogation” what it was; that’s when I told them to GTFO. Never went back.

Listen, they’re as liberal as a chain store. Their whole purpose is to deflect progressive narratives. And that’s all they do.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] RonnieB@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Joe Rogan Experience being called a news source 😠

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do they even have news? I thought it was like the Howard Stern show or something

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 11 hours ago

Interesting that The New York Post is more or less equally distrusted by the two. Kinda surprising, given that it's trash. I'd think repubs would be more in favor.

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 16 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Trust is a strong word for almost all of these. A lot of them have betrayed my trust before so I don't trust them anymore. Like who would trust the New York Times? Honestly? They do some good reporting. But I think you'd have to be naive to just trust whatever they say these days, or ever really.

[–] QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 7 points 19 hours ago

Yeah they lost me when in 2004 they buried a story about all the WMD experts leaving Iraq on the back pages of section A while vocally supporting the war on the front page.

[–] chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 18 hours ago

Exactly. I may use some of these as sources if several all agree, but trust? Nah.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 36 points 1 day ago (2 children)

So Republicans distrust media overall much more than Democrats.

If it wasn't for the Fox News and Joe Rogan trust, i would say Republicans seem more media literate than Democrats. Although in these case the Republicans also distrust them relatively more than the Democrats do for some of "their" media. In particular the NYT and CNN deserve much more distrust imo. It is clear that they are agenda driven, usually against the interests of the middle class.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think it's less about having an agenda or not, and more about the factuality of reporting. If I read "so-and-so is quoted as saying..." then can I trust that what is being represented is the same as what the speaker intended?

Agenda-free reporting would be nice in theory, but I don't think it's very realistic. We can demand certain standards of factuality though, and then just do the legwork to identify and take biases into account.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 8 points 23 hours ago

I mean, they are nowhere near Rogan or Fox News in terms of agenda, but i think Rogan is a great example. Most of his stuff is just podcasts. So instead of "quoting" the guests, he just lets them speak directly. But the choice of guests, the choice of question and so on, make a huge difference in the picture conveyed to the consumer.

One could argue that the relatively subtle way of media like the NYT is more insidious as it is harder to spot, but it seems that the "blunt" approach of Fox News isn't less effective, so i couldn't judge which is better or worse.

I agree with you that it isn't very realistic to find reporting free of any Agenda, even if the reporters do their best to be as neutral as possible.

[–] Davriellelouna@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

In particular the NYT and CNN deserve much more distrust imo. It is clear that they are agenda driven, usually against the interests of the middle class.

I'm a paying subscriber of the New York Times.

I find your criticism deeply unfair. Yes, the NYT sometimes gets thing wrong. No news organization is perfect. But, overall, it's a good newspaper. And they aren't anti-middle class. In fact, I would argue the opposite. It's one of the only big media organization in the US that regularly publishes pro-union opinion articles. When was the last time you saw USA today or CNN do that?

Why Unions Are Good for America

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/30/opinion/uaw-strike-unions.html

Inside Starbucks’ Dirty War Against Organized Labor

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/opinion/starbucks-union-strikes-labor-movement.html?searchResultPosition=193

The Cost of a Decline in Unions

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/nicholas-kristof-the-cost-of-a-decline-in-unions.html

Workers Should Not Have to Risk Their Lives in Heat Waves

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/opinion/heat-wave-workers-climate.html?searchResultPosition=44

Pay Caitlin Clark What She’s Worth

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/opinion/caitlin-clark-wnba-salary.html?searchResultPosition=48

Republicans Assumed a Nebraska Senate Seat Was Safe. Then This Candidate Came Along.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/opinion/nebraska-senate-dan-osborn.html?searchResultPosition=30

The real pro-oligarchy paper is the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ never published a single opinion article saying good things about labor unions.

WSJ editors are explicitly told that if they do that, they will be fired. This is a direct order from the owner, Rupert Murdoch.

In fact, the WSJ has published countless opinion pieces praising right-to work laws, attacking labor unions, and calling for taxes on the rich to be massively slashed:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/workers-choice-is-the-way-forward-unions-employees-9847e341

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-right-to-work-rout-1533767899

Joe Biden named Lina Khan, an anti-monopoly activist, to head the FTC.

If you read the NYT, you will find several opinion articles praising Lina Khan for taking on huge corporations:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/26/opinion/lina-khan-ftc-venture-capital-silicon-valley.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/opinion/lina-khan-antitrust-harris.html

If you read Murdoch's WSJ, every single opinion article ever published attacks her and defends big corporations:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/lina-khan-ftc-capri-tapestry-merger-antitrust-5a3627c1

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-ftc-goes-evidence-free-lina-khan-pbm-healthcare-14076225

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/lina-khan-federal-trade-commission-amazon-case-e2cce1c5

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/an-unfond-farewell-to-lina-khan-fabbf799

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 14 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

I was okay with NYT until I saw the completely unfair and unbalanced way they treated Sanders vs Hillary, promoting every negative story about Sanders and nothing about Hillary. Taking Hillary's side on every issue and controversy. That was when I realized they just look liberal until there's any real change to the oligarchy proposed, and that's when the knives come out.

[–] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 5 points 20 hours ago

More recently they've been publishing all kinds of Israeli propaganda along the lines of "criticizing genocide = Antisemitism" when reporting on college protests and the like. This is the same stance the president is taking to deport or imprison innocent college students and cut funding off to these universities and the NYT is happy to help them do it by manipulating public opinion. They've been doing this stuff for over a hundred years now. Funnily enough back in WWII, they also sided with the Nazis and went out of their way to ignore or omit any mention of the holocaust. They continually like to be on the wrong side of history.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

The NYT ran more “her emails” than any other story that year. They gave trump a free pass, like everybody else. They created this hellscape as much as any corporate news outlet, and in many cases, more so.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 14 points 23 hours ago (4 children)

The NYT has also published many pieces demonizing Palestinians and downplaying Israeli war crimes. It even helped Israeli intelligence assets spread allegations about sexual violence on October 7 that couldn't be verified by other Journalists, human rights groups or the UN, but helped strongly in distracting from well documented and evidenced sexual violence by Israelis against Palestinians they have taken hostage.

The NYTs defends the piece to this day, despite acknowledging:

"In February 2024, Schwartz was found to have liked incendiary posts on social media, including one calling to "turn the strip into a slaughterhouse", "violate any norm, on the way to victory", and that read "Those in front of us are human animals who do not hesitate to violate minimal rules."[2][23][24] The Times launched an investigation.[23] The Times was reviewing Schwartz's social media posts, and made a preliminary statement that such activity breaches company policy.[23][5] Schwartz subsequently locked and deleted her social media posts."

The NYT also simped for the Iraq invasion and bullied out their former Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges, because he dared to criticize that illegal war of aggression.

As for the role of the NYT in maintaining support for the Vietnam war and downplaying US involvement with far right extremist and fascist terror organizations and dictators in Central and South America, i recommend you to read "Manufacturing consent", which provides detailed evidence of how the NYT is part of the corporate media that ensures consent for US crimes against humanity and international law all around the world.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago

Could we do some research into the amount of lies on each source?

[–] Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

If I trust none of them what does that make me?

[–] 4grams@awful.systems 5 points 21 hours ago
[–] piefood@feddit.online 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 18 hours ago

Correct. Trust but verify first.

[–] switcheroo@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

I will hear out Associated and BBC but if it's in the US? Nah, probably owned by some billionaire parasite shitbag.

How the fuck does Fox news have 19% trust rate among the Dems?

[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] KnitWit@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I wanted to see how it stacked up compared to others. Guess not.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The New York Post being a single point of agreement is great.

[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 20 hours ago

Dems hate it cause they know it's a shitty right wing tabloid. Reps hate it because they don't read / don't know what it is, but it's from New York so it must be liberal.

[–] passepartout@feddit.org 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Democrats: There definitely are some news sources you could at least compare to each other if not trust.

Republicans: Fox news and Joe Rogan all the way folks. Nothing else to see here.

Edit: There is an App called Ground News. It tries to outline which topics get reported by which outlets and where the left and right have their blind spots.

[–] Saleh@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fox has a 2.67 factor of trust/distrust among Republicans. Rogan has a 3.44 factor for Republicans.
Meanwhile CNN has 4.14 trust/distrust among Democrats and the NYT has a factor of 7 among Democrats. MSNB still comes above a factor of 4 and WAPO is about the same factor like Rogan.

So it is not as much "all the way here" for Republicans. They are relatively more distrusting of all media, including "their" media.

[–] Makeitstop@lemmy.world 5 points 22 hours ago

The lower trust in their own media might have something to do with how blatantly dishonest those sources are. But it also likely means that their viewers have lowered any standards they might have ever had. They aren't going to be shocked if they see the lies exposed, they can just shrug and say that everyone lies but the other side lies more.

Obvious falsehoods are dismissed as hyperbole, close enough to the truth that it doesn't matter if it's not entirely accurate. Omissions are just distractions cooked up by the other side to keep us from talking about the real issues. There's no expectation that reporting should be factual and follow journalistic standards, the only measure of the quality of the news source is how much they agree with it. They've been inoculated against reality.

[–] ieatpwns@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

CBS is compromised after paying a 16M bribe to the first dork

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 day ago

Conservatives famously have poor media literacy. They are worse than children.

[–] SteveCC@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Wow! Looks like one could say that Dems generally trust "mainstream" media and Reps generally don't.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago

Doesn't Fox News being "The Number One Cable News Network" make it mainstream? I know my mother shutdown when I asked her.

[–] MisanthropiCynic@lemmy.today 2 points 21 hours ago

I’m Surprised WaPo didn’t score better with Rebuplicans. I only see it’s opinion pieces but it’s very right leaning imo

load more comments
view more: next ›