Americans have finally stopped pretending to believe the mainstream media. A new The Economist/YouGov survey shows that just 4% of U.S. adults have “a great deal” of trust in newspapers and television news. That’s not just a historic low — it’s statistical rubble. When only four out of every hundred citizens express confidence in the press, the credibility of “legacy media” is effectively within the margin of error.
The numbers reveal a full-scale collapse in public faith toward the institutions that once shaped the national conversation. Newspapers, once the guardians of truth and watchdogs of power, now inspire about as much trust as longtime member of Congress. Television news, once the common hearth of American life, has turned into a flickering echo chamber for political and cultural propaganda. Together, the two have squandered their most precious asset — moral authority.
According to Gallup’s findings, 28% of Americans say they have “a fair amount” of trust in newspapers, while 36% have “some,” and 31% have “none at all.” For television news, it’s even worse: 4% have “a great deal,” 21% “a fair amount,” 30% “some,” and 44% “none.” These are catastrophic figures for institutions that claim to inform and represent the people.
This didn’t happen overnight. The erosion of trust began decades ago — a slow decay accelerated by arrogance and political bias. Watergate and Vietnam taught Americans that journalists could hold power to account. But as the generations changed, so did the mission. The press morphed from watchdogs into lapdogs, aligning with political elites and cultural crusades rather than asking hard questions. The newsrooms that once fought censorship now enforce it. The anchors who once demanded transparency now read scripted talking points drafted by corporate handlers.
The death spiral intensified during the first Trump administration. Rather than report, the media obsessed. Every editorial meeting became a war council against the president and his supporters. When half the country was painted as a “threat to democracy,” that half stopped watching. CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times became caricatures of objectivity — smug sanctuaries for groupthink. And while they’ve paid the price in ratings and subscriptions, they’ve shown little sign of repentance.
It’s not just the right that’s fed up. Many independents and even moderate Democrats see through the act. The media’s handling of COVID-19, the Hunter Biden laptop, the 2020 election, and the January 6 narrative all exposed an industry less concerned with truth than with narrative control. The promise of journalism — to inform, verify, and challenge — has been replaced by the practice of manipulation, omission, and shaming.
The irony is that Americans are hungrier than ever for truth. They haven’t abandoned news — they’ve abandoned liars. Millions now turn to independent platforms, podcasts, Substacks, and alternative media outlets that speak plainly and respect their intelligence. The explosion of citizen journalism has forced the establishment to confront a painful reality: information can no longer be controlled from the top down. The monopoly has been broken.
Regarding the types of institutions they have great/quite a lot of trust in, Democrats voiced more confidence in:
- Public schools (42%, vs. 18% of Republicans).
- Organized labor (39%, vs. 9%).
- The medical system (37%, vs. 25%).
In contrast, Republican citizens were most likely to say they trust:
- The military (74%, vs. 42% of Democrats).
- The presidency (64%, vs. 5%).
- Small business (63%, vs. 42%).
- The police (61%, vs. 34%).
- Church/organized religion (42%, vs. 16%).
Of course, the legacy press blames “disinformation” and “polarization.” But that’s just projection. They accuse others of doing what they perfected. They cry about fake news while publishing retractions months later — long after the damage is done. They lament the rise of distrust, never admitting their own role in destroying it. They call for “media literacy,” but what they really mean is obedience — a return to the days when people accepted whatever Walter Cronkite said as gospel.
That world is gone. Americans have woken up, and they’re not going back to sleep. A free press is essential to a free people, but a corrupt press is the enemy of both. When only 4% of the population believes what you say, you haven’t just lost trust — you’ve lost your mandate to lead the national conversation.
If legacy media wants redemption, it must rediscover humility. It must once again value truth over agenda, facts over narrative, and transparency over ideology. But judging by the current tone of self-righteousness in the corporate press, such repentance seems unlikely. Instead, it will be the alternative media — honest, unfiltered, accountable to its readers rather than to advertisers or political masters — that carries the torch forward.
The American people have moved on. The mainstream media just hasn’t realized it yet.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
Since the vaccine, I have zero trust in our Government, Doctors, Scientists, or the national media. I know what they tried to do; they just didn’t kill enough of us. The media was watching colleagues drop dead live on the air and said NOTHING. I believe 9/11 was inside job to get the Patriot Act passed. With our Jewish leadership, we have broken almost every International law in the book since. With impunity. I don’t have much faith in right wing media either, as the Jews have taken most of those over.
I also believe the Federal Government is also within the margin of error truth be told.
Yes, it’s always those Joooos… Just keep blaming the Jooos. Someone already tried that and you know how that ended. I agree with you on everything else though. It’s not just the Jewish people, it’s EVERYONE in government, media, and the medical-pharma-gov’t complex. Even Trump is not to be trusted. After all, he’s the “father of the vaccine” right? When has he ever admitted that mRNA was a mistake. Not yet – he still claims credit for it!