Politicians, judges, and TV reporters seen as least ethical – poll

Teachers, nurses, and military officers are among the most trusted

A new poll has found Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the ethics and honesty of people who mainly work in the media and politics.

Gallup’s Wednesday survey noted that five of the 22 professions examined find themselves at “new lows in public esteem,” showing significant dips in favorability from past annual polls. 

Television reporters, for instance, have seen their “ethics rating” – meaning how many view them as “highly” ethical and honest – drop from 23% to 14%, according to Gallup data. Judges have also seen a hit in the public’s perception of their ethics, dropping five points to 38%.

“Americans are most skeptical of the ethics of elected officials, particularly at the federal level, as well as the media,” the report notes. 


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Reporters, House and Senate members, and members of the media score the lowest in the polling. Among these groups, newspaper reporters received the highest marks, with 39% viewing them as honest and ethical. 

That may be low, but it is much higher than the view of members of Congress (9%), and lobbyists (5%). Also scoring below 10 points, along with members of Congress and the media, are car salespeople, with only 8% viewing the profession as trustworthy. 

Nurses lead Gallup’s Honesty and Ethics Poll, as they have for 20 years, with over 80% saying they view the profession as honest and ethical in the survey. Doctors, military officers, pharmacists, and teachers followed, with more than six in 10 Americans viewing people in each profession favorably. 

Politics played some role in how respondents perceived a handful of the professions, including the media. Only 6% of Republicans said TV reporters had high ethics, while that support jumps to 24% among Democrats. The biggest perception difference based on political affiliation comes down to police officers, with 71% of Republicans or right-leaning respondents viewing the profession as highly honest and ethical, and only 36% of Democrats or left-leaning respondents agreeing.

Fauci agency blasted for trans monkey study

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) gave $205,000 to researchers for HIV study

US corona czar Dr. Anthony Fauci’s agency awarded over $200,000 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic to an experiment injecting male monkeys with female hormones, in a bid to find out why trans women have higher rates of HIV.

Fauci’s department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, awarded $205,562 in funding to Scripps Research last month to inject male monkeys with female hormones. Scientists plan to monitor how the hormones impact the males’ immune systems, testing the hypothesis that feminizing hormones negatively affect trans women’s immune systems and thus increase their likelihood of becoming HIV positive.

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The project received NIAID funding last year but began a year earlier, in December 2020. Fauci has been linked to research injecting monkeys with HIV dating back to the mid-1980s. His agency has contracted to acquire some 500 of the animals annually from an island in South Carolina where they are bred specifically for US government research at an annual cost of millions, according to government documents published by campaign group White Coat Waste.

No parallel research injecting female monkeys with male hormones is being conducted – and accordingly, trans men are entirely missing from the Centers for Disease Control’s HIV factsheet, an odd oversight but one that has been justified by pointing out the low rate of infection among that population. Trans men contract HIV at almost the same rate as biological women – 3% vs 4%, respectively – while 19% of trans women are HIV-positive.

Neuroscientist with animal rights advocacy group PETA Katherine Roe was not impressed by the experiment, arguing that monkeys cannot even contract HIV and the testing thus has no value beyond “pointless, wasteful monkey torture.” Instead, she said, monkeys contract the milder and more survivable SIV – simian immunodeficiency virus.

The experiment has brought Fauci once again under fire from animal rights groups, who have already heavily criticized him for horrific beagle experiments his agency was found to have funded, including infecting dogs with heartworm only to euthanize them afterwards.