Americans' Confidence in Television News Drops to New Low – Liberals' and moderates' views are now similar to conservatives' … Americans' confidence in television news is at a new low by one percentage point, with 21% of adults expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in it. This marks a decline from 27% last year and from 46% when Gallup started tracking confidence in television news in 1993 … It is not clear precisely why Americans soured so much on television news this year compared with last. Americans' negativity likely reflects the continuation of a broader trend that appeared to enjoy only a brief respite last year. Americans have grown more negative about the media in recent years, as they have about many other U.S. institutions and the direction of the country in general. – Gallup.com

Dominant Social Theme: It is important for the public to watch TV news so they understand the truth of what's happening in the world.

Free-Market Analysis: It is kind of funny to see Gallup's execs wondering why Americans don't "trust" television these days. Could it have anything to do with the wider disconnect between what people are told and what seems real?

We certainly think so. We notice there is no dearth of viewers for Internet information. In fact, we are regaled with stories in the mainstream media about "Internet addictions" and the like.

We certainly think so. We notice there is no dearth of viewers for Internet information. In fact, we are regaled with stories in the mainstream media about "Internet addictions" and the like.

It is interesting as well that there are few stories about the relative popularity of the so-called alternative 'Net media versus the mainstream media. It never seems to occur to the many intrepid editors who populate the mainstream to ask why Internet info is so popular when the mainstream media is not.

Reading this article cannot be much fun for the powers-that-be who count on the mainstream media to portray reality in a certain way. The idea always is to justify both a globalization of commerce and a concentration of power into fewer and fewer hands.

The power elite counted on the mainstream media to do this job in the 20th century and it did it well. In the 21st century, what we call the Internet Reformation has greatly interfered with the seamless messaging of dominant social themes that the elites package endlessly for mainstream dissemination.

The idea is to frighten Western middle classes into giving up wealth and power to specially prepared globalist institutions. Most of the memes are scarcity based and the solutions are always to be found in facilities like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, etc.

What is especially striking about the numbers is that they correspond to a loss of faith in political institutions as well. Congress in particular gets low grades from Americans who routinely rate Congress in the low double digits when it comes to competence and trustworthiness.

The numbers add up and they are sending an important signal, in our view. When citizens trust neither their political system nor the media that reports on it, then the chances are that society has significant problems and may not even be around very long as a cohesive whole.

In fact, more and more these days are predicting a break up of the US into numerous regions that have more in common with each other than with the larger federation.

It is, as many in the South would note, a federation that as been kept together over the past 150 years by the threat of force. While this certainly worked in the past, it may not work today given people's political awareness and the loss of confidence in bedrock sociopolitical facilities. Here's some more from the article:

The findings are from Gallup's annual update on confidence in U.S. institutions, conducted June 7-10 this year. As such, the findings preceded the erroneous initial reports by cable-news networks CNN and Fox News regarding the U.S. Supreme Court's June 28 decision about the constitutionality of the U.S. healthcare law.

Among 16 U.S. institutions tested, television news ranks 11th, following newspapers in 10th place. The 25% of adults who express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers is down slightly from 28% last year. Confidence in newspapers is now half of what it was at its peak of 51% in 1979.

This year's updates mark a setback from last year for both television news and newspapers, when Americans appeared to be regaining some confidence in these institutions, though they are more in line with 2007-2010 readings.

Many of the groups that lost confidence in television news also tended to lose confidence in newspapers, though to a lesser degree. These include liberals, older Americans, men, and postgraduates. Other groups budged only slightly.

In the 20th century TV and newspapers were ubiquitous methodologies of communication. Now in the 21st century, only a quarter of those questioned express confidence in newspaper news and even fewer in televised news. These remain the main tools of elite promotions and they are not being well received.

Gallup analysts offer the idea that confidence is eroding (lately anyway) in television because of high profile mistakes made by CNN and Fox News in their coverage of the recent Supreme Court healthcare law. This, in our humble view, is an absurd evaluation.

Television and newspapers, too, are suffering from the consistent delivery of a message that does not correspond to people's reality. Absent the Internet, this might not have mattered so much. But the Internet is NOT absent and the damage to mainstream media continues to mount.

The Gallup analysis ends with the simplistic statement that the news media as a whole "will have to renew their efforts to show Americans that they deserve a higher level of confidence than what they enjoy today."

But the problem is not with news media. The media, in fact, does not exist. PEOPLE exist, who happen to work in the news media, and these people are well aware of what can and cannot be said and written.

In other words, the power elite that wants to run the world and apparently controls central banking as a means of doing so has done its job too well when it comes to journalism. Those who work in the modern Western media are all too aware of the current "redlines" – and what it means to step over them.

This self-censorship is easy enough to discern. One simply needs to endorse the orthodoxy of elite memes to stay out of trouble. Such memes, of course, are meant to support the elite's migration toward world government and support such fictions as global warming, the war on terror and peak oil.

As stated, many dominant social themes are fear-based and if people are informed elsewhere as to the true state of affairs then the larger belief structure suffers.

It IS suffering. People derive no great satisfaction from being manipulated and when they are able to discern that manipulation, their confidence in the sources of that manipulation will certainly decline. That's what is happening now.

In our view, it is not a reversible phenomenon, or not in the short run. Too many are aware of the globalist conspiracy and as the powers-that-be grow more frustrated they are becoming more brutal and obvious, which only feeds the larger distrust.

You may call such a situation a "Catch-22." We have coined the term Internet Reformation.