Overwhelming majorities of Americans have lost their trust in the media to accurately report the news, according to a new poll out Wednesday.

In a survey from the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, a whopping 83 percent of respondents said they were concerned the media would “report inaccurate information or disinformation” in their 2024 election coverage.

Eighty-one percent said they are worried the media will report unverified information, and 77 percent said they feared the media would stick to the facts — but be dishonest in their framing, only covering things favorable to their preferred candidates or detrimental to their opponents.

Pollsters found that 72 percent are worried media will rely on artificial intelligence to generate stories.

After corporate media ran the Russia collusion lie, the Kavanaugh rape smear, COVID disinformation, transgender propaganda, and various other dangerous and damaging info ops, 83% (!) of Americans report they do not trust corporate media to report facts. https://t.co/BpOlfKelz1

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) May 1, 2024

The survey results corroborate the findings of another poll released by Gallup last fall, which revealed American trust in the media at a new low. According to Gallup, 39 percent of Americans rated their level of confidence in mass media at “none at all,” marking an all-time high since 1972 when the pollster first asked the question. Twenty-nine percent said they had “not very much trust” in media, and only about 3 in 10 reported any confidence.

Election administration is like industrial food production. The average person doesn’t really know — or care to know — how the sausage gets made, but he cares very much the moment it smells fishy.

A Morning Consult poll commissioned by the Public Affairs Council last fall found that just 37 percent of Americans believe the 2024 election “will be both honest and open to all eligible voters.” A University of Central Florida exit poll in January found that a third — 33.5 percent — of voters were either “not very” or “not at all” confident the 2024 election would be conducted fairly.

Many Americans instinctively recognize that without free and fair elections, our representative government and the freedoms it guarantees are jeopardized. And yet, start talking with your neighbors about the nuances of election law and administration (or just mention the word “audit” or “provisional ballot”) and their eyes probably glaze over.

Some are terrified of being slapped with the idiotic but intimidating smear of “election denier.” The corporate media have done their best to elevate the small minority of outlandish conversations about election security while pretending sincere and articulate concerns don’t exist.

But you don’t have to be a legal expert to understand the most fundamental things about what makes elections free and secure. If you can articulate these five basic points, you’re already way ahead of the majority of corporate media.

Chaos Is Bad

Confusion creates opportunities for both intentional and unintentional wrongdoing. Lax policies that make

Perhaps not surprisingly, swing state leftist prosecutors are ramping up the phony “fake electors” show trials, with Biden v. Trump 2.0 little more than six months away. And the Trump-hating accomplice media will be aiding and abetting this specialized brand of lawfare every step of the way. 

But the litigious left has run into some problems trying to sell its legally flawed narrative that former President Donald Trump, along with his campaign attorneys and supporters, unlawfully used an alternate electors strategy to subvert the results of the 2020 elections.  

Last week, Arizona became the latest Democrat swing state to target political opponents via the “fake electors” narrative. Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the indictment of 18 people, including 11 alternate electors for Trump. The accused include former Trump campaign attorney Christina Bobb, who currently serves as the Republican National Committee’s senior counsel for election integrity, and John Eastman, former Trump attorney who is facing disbarment in California for leading an alternate electors strategy similar to the one that was employed by John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign. 

Also indicted are Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani and the former president’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in a move Forbes described as “the latest in a string of states where false electors and Trump allies are now facing criminal charges and investigations years after the 2020 election.”

“I think these are political prosecutions that are outside of the law,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow in the Heritage Foundation’s