The media gets lower approval ratings on its performance than President Trump regarding its handling of the global coronavirus pandemic, according to a new poll released Monday from Monmouth University.
According to the poll, 50% of Americans approve of President Trump’s performance during the coronavirus outbreak, while 45% said he has done a “bad job, ” Fox News reports.
However, there’s a much more narrow split among those polled on the media’s job performance. According to the poll, just 45% of Americans said the media did a good job reporting on the outbreak while 43% said the opposite. Roughly 10% of those polled responded with “mixed, depends.”
The public has a worse view of the reactions of Congress during the spread of the COVID-19 virus, with 42% saying it has done a “good job” , while 37 percent say it’s been doing a “bad job.”
The American public itself was also included in the poll and scored even worse. Forty-five percent of Americans polled said the American public has handled the virus outbreak poorly while only 38% said the public has handled the outbreak well.
State governors across the country performed better than any group, with 72% saying their state’s governor has performed well, while just 18% disapproved. Federal health agencies also scored relatively high marks with 65% approval, and 24% disapproval.
“The president gets more positive than negative marks for his handling of the COVID outbreak but his numbers are still driven by the nation’s typical partisan divide. Governors, on the other hand, seem to be emerging as the most trusted official voice in this crisis across the board,” said Director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute Patrick Murray.
The poll surveyed 851 adults from March 18-22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.