New Poll: 72% of Americans Think ‘It Should Be Easier to Sue’ Media Who Knowingly Publish Fake News

Monica Sanchez | August 8, 2018
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A recent Axios/SurveyMonkey poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans (72%) believe the news media knowingly and intentionally report "fake, false or purposely misleading" news stories, MRCTV reported.

A new Ipsos poll went a step further and found that the same large percentage of Americans (72%) believe “it should be easier to sue reporters who knowingly publish false information.”

The poll also found that nearly one-third of Americans agree with President Trump that the news media are “the enemy of the American people.”

Trump has clarified that he meant only “fake news” when referring to the news media as the “enemy” but insisted a “large percentage of it” was dishonest.

"They asked my daughter Ivanka whether or not the media is the enemy of the people. She correctly said no. It is the FAKE NEWS, which is a large percentage of the media, that is the enemy of the people!" he recently tweeted.

Even so, most Americans seem to agree that fake news has become big enough of an issue to warrant legal action.  

The large majority of Americans (85%) support freedom of the press as "essential for American democracy” and 68% say that “reporters should be protected from pressure from government or big business interests.” This is consistent along party lines.

Even so, over a quarter of Americans (26%) say that “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior.”

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to distrust the media.

“While a plurality – 46% – agree ‘most news outlets try their best to produce honest reporting’, there are very stark splits by the partisan identification of the respondent with most Democrats (68%) generally believing in the good intent of journalists, but comparatively few Republicans (29%),” reports Ipsos. “And when we ask questions with specific partisan cues, the political split is very wide. For instance, 80% of Republicans but only 23% of Democrats agree that ‘most news outlets have a liberal bias,’ and 79% of Republicans but only 11% of Democrats agree, ‘the mainstream media treats President Trump unfairly.’”

The Ipsos poll of 1,003 U.S. adults was conducted August 3-6 and has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for all respondents.

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