Who’s less popular, the president or his critics?

We hear, often, how low President Bush’s approval ratings are, thanks to the constant media coverage of these things. Right now, it’s very low, with the disapproval rating at about 61 percent.

But the public trust in Congress is lower. Approximately 68 percent of American citizens disapprove of the job Congress is doing. We don’t hear much about that in big media though. They’re too intertwined with political partisanship.

Which is one of the reasons they’re hovering around an all time low in approval ratings also. But you won’t find many of them talking about that. Except for a select few, like the WSJ, back when the subject was more of an elephant on the table.

In a much-discussed speech last week at a large British TV conference, Jeremy Paxman, a well-known news interviewer for the BBC, remarked that the general reaction of the U.K. media to Mr. Blair’s critique was: “Yah booh. You’re a politician. We’re media yahoos. Get over it.” He demurred from the herd: “I’m sorry to say but I think there’s something in all of these arguments.” He urged his colleagues to get a grip and “stand back and ask what we’re using this medium for.”

The term “media swamp” came up in the next paragraph, which sounds about right.

All this has gotten the media into high anxiety over the one thing it presumes to value most: the public’s trust. “The defining problem of contemporary television,” the BBC’s Mr. Paxman told the TV professionals last week, “is trust: Can you believe what you see on television, does television treat people fairly, is it healthy for society?”

Fascinating and worthwhile questions to be sure, insofar as most opinion polls of how much the American public “trusts” the press, TV news or even Congress have put their approval ratings in Lindsay Lohanland.

But for the media ponderers there’s a more troubling issue than the restoration of trust. It’s the possibility that too many people now simply don’t much care about the major media anymore.

So they’re deflecting attention to how much people don’t care for the president.

This is definitely an “Emperor’s Clothes” tale.