Pew: Republicans, young adults now nearly as likely to trust info from social media as from national news outlets

When national outlets release stories with the same level of verification as the typical Facebook post, this should not surprise us. The trend of mistrust really accelerated after Dan Rather's false story about Bush's national guard record. Sadly, things have gotten worse in the newsroom since then. We need to be careful that we not become cynical of every news release, but we also need to be willing to hold journalists (on both sides of the political spectrum) accountable for promoting stories that cannot be supported. One positive about the social media presence is that now we are more likely to find out about the media distortions than we were 35 years ago. Back then, if Paul Harvey didn't correct a falsehood, we seldom even knew about it. Sure, some people had access to Cal Thomas, but you had to pay for that. I get the impression that some would like us to go back to those days when the media could lie and no one would know it.

My take is that it started with teens, and I remember it being infuriating when I'd be trying to pass on wisdom, and they'd be countering with some nonsense they saw from some influencer. I also saw it a LOT with COVID-19, where friends would be peddling utter nonsense they got from the fever swamp. I even got in trouble a bit when I responded to one thing my wife had received on Facebook; the claim from the fever swamp was that it was horrible collusion that executives at the Mayo Clinic were also key players/directors in other areas, and my response was "if not these guys, who exactly would you recommend?"

(one example; former CEO was a member of a U.N. panel. OK, would you rather have another representative from England's NHS or something?)

The adherence to hierarchies of evidence has always been tenuous--I remember being appalled when a quiz I took in college had questions gleaned from Redbook (what's next, the Weekly World News?)--but it seems that these days, the fever swamp is rapidly approaching parity with traditional information/knowledge sources.

At one point, it's understandable--it's not like the NIH under Fauci distinguished themselves for wisdom during COVID, for example--but at another point, it's terrifying.