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More people hold a favorable view of podcasters Joe Rogan and Megyn Kelly than those that see them unfavorably, while the leading news source for those surveyed is social media and YouTube, a new poll has found.
According to the survey conducted by Emerson College Polling, which was conducted last month and consisted of 1000 adults, Rogan received the highest favorability rating among the media personalities presented to the respondents.
According to the poll, 16 percent of Americans have a very favorable view of the conspiracy-peddling podcaster, while an additional 16 percent see him in a somewhat favorable light. 27 percent, meanwhile, have a neutral opinion on him. On the flip side, 23 percent see him in a very or somewhat negative light.
Kelly, the former Fox News star who has refashioned herself into a MAGA provocateur, also received fairly high marks in the survey. 24 percent of respondents said that they had either very or somewhat favorable views of the right-wing podcast host, compared to 21 percent who hold an unfavorable position on her. 24 percent have a neutral opinion on Kelly, and 32 percent said they never heard of her or hold no opinion of the conservative commentator.
Among the other media personalities that respondents were asked about, only ABC News anchor David Muir and Fox News host Jesse Watters were above water in terms of favorability. According to the survey, Muir has a net favorability of seven percent while Watters was close behind at six percent.
Though the survey suggested that Americans tend to have more positive views of conservative pundits than liberal commentators, Tucker Carlson received the worst net approval score in the poll. Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in 2023 and has since launched his own pro-Trump media company, received a net unfavorability of eight points.
The perceived amount of trust that many respondents place in both Kelly and Rogan comes as the uber-popular Trump-boosting hosts have recently been directly challenged on the way they conduct their shows.
During a recent sit-down with British neoconservative author Douglas Murray, Rogan was taken to task for his “just asking questions” philosophy and reliance on non-experts to weigh in on complex issues. “If you throw a lot of s*** out there, there’s some point at which ‘I’m just raising questions’ is not a valid thing,” Murray declared. “You’re not raising questions, you’re not asking questions, you’re telling people something.”
Kelly, meanwhile, repeatedly told The New York Times in a recent interview that she still considered herself a journalist despite taking the stage at a Donald Trump rally on the eve of the 2024 election and embracing him. She also said she backed the president’s war against the media, despite admitting that she needs the legacy press to do the reporting that she comments on.
“I’m in favor of it. I share his feelings. Just like most people on the right, I have a healthy amount of loathing for a large portion of the media, and they are fake news,” she told the Times this spring.
“I think it’s important to have news gatherers out there getting news, and people like me cannot exist without that. I need content, I need news to talk about and report on,” Kelly added.
Still, while Americans appear to disproportionately get their news from social media and YouTube, they also said that they have more trust in the information presented by local and national media organizations.
According to Emerson’s survey, 72 percent of respondents had a great deal or fair amount of trust in the information they get from local news outlets, while 61 percent said the same about national press organizations. In contrast, 54 percent of those surveyed said they had little or no trust in what they saw on social media, compared to 46 percent who trusted the information they got online.
As for the Trump administration, 47 percent said they trusted the information they got from the White House, while 48 percent said they did not.
“The main sources of news for Americans include social media or YouTube (37%), ABC, CBS, or NBC (17%), FOX News (8%), local news (8%), CNN or MSNBC (6%), newspapers like New York Times/Wall Street Journal (2%), and public television (2%),” the survey noted.
“YouTube is the most used social media platform among respondents with 70% currently using it, followed by Facebook (68%), Instagram (45%), TikTok (39%), X/Twitter (29%), Pinterest (22%), Snapchat (19%), and Reddit (17%),” the poll added.
English (US) ·