the people," at the same time praising far-right pro-Trump fringe outlets. Trump has regularly lied and promoted conspiracy theories during his presidency. In 2017, a Gallup poll found that the majority of Americans view the news media favoring a particular political party; 64% believed it favored the Democratic Party, compared to 22% who believed it favored the Republican Party. In 2017, the trust in media by both Democrats and Republicans changed once again. According to a September 2017 Gallup poll, "Democrats' trust and confidence in the mass media to report the news 'fully, accurately and fairly' has jumped from 51% in 2016 to 72% this year—fueling a rise in Americans' overall confidence to 41%. Independents' trust has risen modestly to 37%, while Republicans' trust is unchanged at 14%." Shortly before the 2020 election, the Gallup poll showed that confidence in the mass media has continued to decline among Republicans and independent voters, to 10% and 36%, respectively. Among Democratic voters, confidence rose to 73%. A Gallup poll released in October 2021 showed 68% of Democrats, 31% of independents, and just 11% of Republicans trust the media a great deal or fair amount. Both Democrats' and independents' trust decreased 5% over the past year. News values According to Jonathan M. Ladd, Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters, "The existence of an independent, powerful, widely respected news media establishment is a historical anomaly. Prior to the twentieth century, such an institution had never existed in American history." However, he looks back to the period between 1950 and 1979 as a period where "institutional journalists were powerful guardians of the republic, maintaining high standards of political discourse." A number of writers have tried to explain the decline in journalistic standards. One explanation is the 24-hour news cycle, which faces the necessity of generating news even when no news-worthy events occur. Another is the simple fact that bad news sells more newspapers than good news. A third possible factor is the market for "news" that reinforces the prejudices of a target audience. In 2014, The New York Times wrote: "In a 2010 paper, Mr. Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, a frequent collaborator and fellow professor at Chicago Booth, found that ideological slants in newspaper coverage typically resulted from what the audience wanted to read in the media they sought out, rather than from the newspaper owners' biases." As reported by Haselmayer,