that a substantial portion of the American Electorate subscribes to that view Greenberg says.
Now supporters of President Trump say a recent poll vindicates Greenbergs analysis. Its no longer that big a leap from perceived bias to claims of outright fabrication of news stories.
When a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found that nearly half of American voters 46 think the news media are fabricating stories about President Trump alarm bells went off.
For Trump supporters the Politico/Morning Consult Poll seemed to be vindication. The media have been unfair to Trump they say running with any unflattering gossip they can find or just making stuff up out of whole cloth. People are starting to understand that.
There are arguments going back to President Richard Nixon that the objective media are actually biased in a liberal way and hostile to Republicans" says Greenberg.
Public trust in mass media has been sinking for decades as Gallup polling shows long before Trump burst onto the political stage. And while many press experts say its impossible to draw a direct correlation between Trumps statements and any growth in distrust the president is clearly taking 
advantage of this fertile ground.
Voters have long been prepared to believe the worst about news outlets and President Trump is using it to call the medias bluff.
For Trump the Fake News" charge is often the default reaction to media reports he doesnt like particularly those that portray the White House or even Trump personally in an unflattering way.
But the reality is Trump seems to love reporters as much as he hates them.
The media after all fueled his rise to the presidency covering one eye-popping Trump event after another during the campaign and leaving the other candidates starving for oxygen. Now as president Trump is treated to round-the-clock coverage chronicling his every public performance and giving him a ready platform for attention.
In fact Trump seeks out the company of reporters more than many of his predecessors. When traveling on Air Force One he comes to the back of the plane to schmooze with the small traveling press corps on about every third trip say reporters who travel with him regularly. That is far more than President Obama ever did.
Trump also of late has held impromptu press conferences that are unprecedented in the modern era. With little advance warning Trump recently took to the Rose Garden to answer questions for 45 minutes. Hes often stopped for 15 minutes on the South Lawn before boarding the presidential helicopter and fielded questions from reporters.
When asked if he should be more civil he came back with an extraordinary answer that spoke to his grievances with media coverage but also revealed much about his self-image.
Well I think the press makes me more uncivil than I am" Trump said.
You know people dont understand I went to an Ivy League college. I was a nice student. I did very well. Im a very intelligent person.
You know the fact is I think I really believe I think the press creates a different image of Donald Trump than the real person."
Then theres Trumps free-wheeling way of expressing himself. One of the problems with Trump is if one wanted to correct everything that he said that was misleading there would be no time to cover the news" says Kathleen Hall Jamieson director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Factcheck.org. That leads Trump supporters to complain that journalists spend all their time attacking Trump instead of reporting his accomplishments.That critique actually has some legitimacy" says Ms. Jamieson.Low unemployment a booming stock market sweeping deregulation across many government agencies and the seating of a conservative justice on the Supreme Court are all part of the Trump record that the
president and his supporters feel are getting short shrift in the media.
Jamieson advises that the media refine how it fact-checks Trump. Dont restate the false information in the process of trying to correct it she says because that actually reinforces the incorrect information. And its best to avoid repeating the phrase fake news."
Call it viral deception" says Jamieson. Fake news means anything Donald Trump doesnt like. You dont want to delegitimize the word news by calling it fake. "
Whom Do You Trust?
A June poll by Gallup found that Americans confidence in newspapers is still low but rising. The same poll found that confidence in TV news is also up albeit from a record low of 18 three years ago.
A Quinnipiac poll released Oct. 12 also had some good news for the media along with some bad:
- While American voters disapprove 60 to 35 of the way the media cover Trump
- They also disapprove 59 to 39 of the way Trump talks about the media.
