Dropping Trust in US Media

Summary

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago. Meanwhile, seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%). ###Embeddable### When Gallup began measuring trust in the news media in the 1970s, between 68% and 72% of Americans expressed confidence in reporting. However, by the next reading in 1997, public confidence had fallen to 53%. Media trust remained just above 50% until it dropped to 44% in 2004, and it has not risen to the majority level since. The highest reading in the past decade was 45% in 2018, which came just two years after confidence had collapsed amid the divisive 2016 presidential campaign. The latest 28% confidence reading, from a Sept. 2-16 poll, marks the first time the measure has fallen below 30%. Media Trust at Record Lows Among All Party Groups Although Democrats and Republicans continue to express different levels of trust in the news media, the percentages with high confidence in reporting are at low points among all party groups. Republicans’ confidence, which hasn’t risen above 21% since 2015, has dropped to single digits (8%) for the first time in the trend. Independents’ trust has not reached the majority level since 2003, and the latest 27% reading matches last year’s historical low. For Democrats, the narrowest of majorities (51%) now express trust in the media, which is a repeat of the low previously seen in 2016. ###Embeddable### Media Confidence Remains Higher Among Older Adults There is a clear generational divide in trust in the media that has grown particularly stark over the past decade, according to an analysis of three-year aggregated data to increase sample sizes. In the most recent three-year period, spanning 2023 to 2025, 43% of adult...