A record high portion of people see reporters as low or very low ethical standards, after a year in which the winning president-elect made trashing the media’s honesty a centerpiece of his campaign.
A new Gallup poll said 41 percent of people polled said the media have low ethical standards. That’s 10 points higher than the prior high of 31 percent of those who held the same view of the press in 2008 and 2009.
Trust in college teachers has also slipped. A majority of those polled had said teachers have high or very high ethical standards, but that dropped to 47 percent. Additionally, those who said teachers have low or very low standards rose to 18 percent, up from 11 percent in 2009.
Partisan differences could also be seen in how college teachers are rated. Gallup said 33 percent of Republicans gave teachers a high rather, compared to 63 percent of Democrats.
Nurses once again had the highest rating from those in the poll: 84 percent said they have high standards, and just 3 percent said they have low standards.
Despite backlash by groups such as Black Lives Matter and other protesters over police killings during the past year, police officers won a higher rating for integrity this year than last: 58 percent of Americans rated police officers highly in 2016, 2 percent more than in 2015.
