Americans' Confidence In TV News Drops To New Low

Confidence in television news has hit a new low, a new Gallup poll reported Tuesday.

The polling firm does an annual survey of the confidence that Americans have in their biggest institutions. Just 21% of adults said they had a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in TV news. That's down a whopping 25% from 1993, when Gallup began the poll:

The survey showed an interesting political split. Overall, Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to trust TV news (34 percent versus 17 percent.) But self-identified liberals were the most disenchanted of all groups, with just 19 percent expressing confidence in the medium.

Gallup said that "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."

As if to illustrate that point, American newspapers also fared very poorly in the survey, with only 25 percent of respondents expressing confidence. As the news media has become increasingly controlled by a few global conglomerates who format news as entertainment programing, often little more than repackaged political "think tank" propaganda, Americans have lost confidence in traditional "old media" news outlets.

In 1910, nearly 60% of cities had competing daily papers, but today that completion of viewpoints has all but disappeared. Unfortunately, media consolidation over the past twenty years has taken its toll on the "widest possible dissemination of information as an essential check on government and business."

Through successive acquisitions and mergers a few massive multinational media conglomerates controlled by conservative owners control more and more of our vital information sources – including television networks, cable channels, newspaper publishing, radio, and the Internet.

A robust, free press has been viewed by many as an essential check on government and business since the early days of the Republic. “The only security of all is in a free press,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1823. Nearly 60 years ago, the Supreme Court declared that "the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is essential to the condition of a free society."

Today, people, particularly younger Americans, have gone to Internet to find the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources.

A Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey in 2010 found that the internet surpassed television as the main source of national and international news for people younger than 30. (chart right)

Since 2007, the number of 18 to 29 year old adults citing the internet as their main source has nearly doubled, from 34% to 65%.

Over this period, the number of young people citing television as their main news source has dropped from 68% to 52%.

The internet is slowly closing in on television as Americans’ main source of national and international news.

Poll: Smartphone Users Back Obama

According to a new survey from Harris Interactive, both iPhone and Android owners find common ground when picking the next president.

Regardless of whether they're on iOS or Android, younger smartphone owners overwhelmingly choose Barack Obama -- smartphone users would vote for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney, 49 percent to 31 percent.

That wide margin holds across iOS and Android users, with iPhone owners preferring Obama to Romney 47 percent to 34 percent and Android owners preferring Obama to Romney 50 percent to 29 percent.

The survey was commissioned by Velti, a mobile marketing firm.

Politico: “The results of this survey demonstrate that the smartphone market is becoming a whole new demographic that candidates must take into consideration when building a comprehensive campaign strategy,” Velti CMO Krishna Subramanian said. “Clearly, mobile advertising is emerging as an influential medium and a distinct audience.”

Just as candidates are quickly learning how to text mobile device owners for campaign donations, so too candidates will quickly learn how to message mobile Ads to smartphones. In fact, Mitt Romney became the first U.S. politician to use Apple's iAd service in June, with another round of Google ads for Android, coming. Barack Obama's campaign is thought to be planning smartphone Ads in the near future, too.

There was some good news for Romney in the Harris Interactive poll, however: Romney leads Obama 57 percent to 34 percent among older retired iPhone and Android users.

An overwhelming 97 percent of Obama voters were either iPhone or Android users, compared with 63 percent for Romney voters. The survey was conducted online June 27-29 among 2,164 adults, 776 of whom were iPhone/Android owners.

More:

• The Mobile Election 2012
• Smartphones Rapidly Replacing Computers For Internet Access

Attorney General Holder Calls Texas' Voter Photo I.D. Law A Poll Tax

Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday likened Texas' Senate Bill 14 (SB 14) voter photo I.D. law to a “poll tax” that was outlawed by the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“As many of you know, yesterday was the first day in the trial of a case that the state of Texas filed against the Justice Department under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act seeking approval of it’s proposed voter ID law,” Holder told attendees of the 103rd convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). (Texas Voter Photo I.D. Federal Trial Opening Arguments)

Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General of the United States speaking at the 103rd convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Holder stated that, "After close review, the department found that this law would be harmful to minority voters and we rejected its implementation."

“Under the proposed law, concealed handgun licenses would be acceptable forms of photo ID, but student IDs would not,” the attorney general continued. “Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them. And some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. ... We call those poll taxes.”

The attorney general said he couldn’t predict what would happen in the Texas case, but he promised to “not allow political pretext to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious right.”

“The arc of American history has always moved towards expanding the electorate,” Holder said. “We will simply not allow this era to be the reversal of that historic progress. I will not allow that to happen.”

In opening arguments of the photo I.D. trial DOJ trial attorney Elizabeth Westfall said that a disproportionate number of the 1.4 million Texans who do not have the proper ID are black or Hispanic.

Poll taxes were a part of Jim Crow-era laws that were used largely in southern states to disenfranchise minority voters. The 24th Amendment abolished poll taxes in federal elections and the Supreme Court later banned them in state elections as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Click here for full text of Attorney General Holder's speech as prepared for delivery.

More:

• As court fight looms over voter ID, those who have none fear losing voice
  

TDP Chair Gilberto Hinojosa Responds To Gov. Perry's Rejection Of Medicaid Funding

Texas Democratic Party State Chair Gilberto Hinojosa today responded to the Gov.

Perry's letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reaffirming his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Perry said in his letter, "I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obama care power grab. Neither a 'state' exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better 'patient protection' or in more 'affordable care.' They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care. "

Hinojosa said in a statement posted on the TDP website:

Rick Perry is refusing $112 billion in health care money for uninsured Texans for three reasons. First, it doesn’t allow for kickbacks to his political donors. Second, he needs to feed his radical right wing base some red meat. And third … oh heck, he forgot the third.

Now we know why the Texas Republican platform calls for an end to teaching critical thinking skills. Any thinking makes it obvious that Perry’s bullheaded refusal of funding to expand Medicaid is wrong for Texas and deadly for Texans. Rick Perry is playing cute while a teenager never makes it to prom, a father never gets to walk his daughter down the aisle, children are dying from the lack of simple preventative care, and a mother won’t live to see her children to adulthood.

Perry’s decision will cost lives, and it will cost Texans and local governments much needed dollars in a tight economy.

Texans have to wonder how many lives and how much of your money Rick Perry is willing to sacrifice for his political career.

Texas is in 51st place among the 50 states – we are even behind Washington, DC – in delivery of health care to its citizens. But, Rick Perry is turning down these funds, because he believes that Texans know what’s best. Texans do, but their career Republican politicians don’t.

Texas Republicans, including David Dewhurst, Greg Abbott, and Joe Straus hide under the bed in fear of the Tea Party's irrational wrath if they speak up. Texans will continue to die far before their time while Rick Perry and the Republican Party pander to people who applaud the thought of watching people die in pain at the emergency room door.

Enough is enough. Politicians who call themselves “pro-life” while blithely turning down money to help the living need a swift kick to the rear end and a ticket out of the State of Texas. Help Texas Democrats get this message out.