Sullivan: Glimmer of hope in media survey

Don’t take that victory lap just yet, Mr. President.

At first glance, a new report from Pew Research looks devastating for President Donald Trump’s favorite punching bag, the nation’s news media. One might think that the message Trump has been hammering home is really getting through. After all, Pew’s polling clearly shows that a big chunk of the American public buys his message that the press is a negative force in our society.

Dishonest, scum, you pick the Trumpian insult.

Republicans, by a startling 8 to 1, are more or less with him on that.

As Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute observed Monday: “Their negative assessment comes perilously close to President Trump’s formulation earlier this year that national news media should be considered an ‘enemy of the people.’ “

But here’s the catch: Those numbers, according to Pew, haven’t changed over the past year, since the businessman-turned-Republican nominee for president was leading boisterous crowds in “CNN sucks” chants at his campaign rallies or tweeting in all caps about “fake news.”

The negative assessments, bad as they are, are simply holding steady.

But among some segments of the public, the media is actually looking better than ever.

Just who are these crazed iconoclasts?

1) College graduates. (Positive view of the media up 23 percent since 2015.)

2) Those with some college education. (Up 6 percent.)

3) People over 50 (Up 26 percent.)

That’s not a bad crowd to be popular with. And the spiking subscriptions at major newspapers, including the Washington Post, seem to tell the same story, as do major donations to organizations that support and defend journalism.

Pew identifies seven categories of respondents – with many, but certainly not all, coming from left of center politically – who, more than in the past, think the news media is a positive force in society.

“Democrats’ views of the effect of the national news media have grown more positive over the past year, while Republicans remain overwhelmingly negative,” the report said. Clearly, for some people, the diligent (sometimes groundbreaking) journalism of the past months is appreciated.

It’s notable, too, that those who have a dim view of the role of the press in society don’t think too fondly of another stalwart American institution: colleges and universities. That number has changed dramatically in just two years: In 2015, 37 percent of Republicans thought higher education was a negative force in society; now, a majority – 58 percent – think so.

Don’t get me wrong. As a true believer in the crucial role of the press in America, I’m deeply worried by what this report shows. And it’s completely believable. It backs up what I know from my own conversations and reading, my own email inbox, the reader comments I see on stories:

The nation’s partisan divide is ugly and getting worse, and the ability of the independent press to communicate with – and be believed by – the whole country may well be weakening.

Amy Mitchell, Pew’s director of journalism research, said the growing partisan divide in attitudes about the news media mirrors a Pew study done earlier this year in which Democrats showed a growing appreciation of the press’s watchdog role; but appreciation for that role plummeted among Republicans.

If journalism is to do its job fully, and as the founders intended, it can’t speak primarily to one side of the political aisle.

I don’t have the answers to that problem, but in the meantime, it’s important to acknowledge what this report doesn’t show: That Trump’s traitorous-media-scum message is moving the needle as he intends.

And that – although in a grasping-at-straws way – is good news.