A new poll from Gallup asks Americans how much they trust the media to report news “fully, accurately, and fairly.” Respondents had the options of “a great deal,” “a fair amount,” “not much,” and “none at all.”
The plurality of respondents listed their level of trust in reporting at “none at all.” 38% of respondents gave that answer. That is just 2 percentage points lower than the all-time high recorded by Gallup, which came during the 2016 presidential election.
When broken out by partisanship, there is a wide gap between members of the two major political parties. 70% of those that identify as Democrats say they have a great deal of trust in the media. Just 14% of those that identify as Republicans give the same answer. Not surprisingly then, Republicans are the most likely to say they do not trust the media at all with 57% of them giving that answer.
Gallup points out that the phenomenon of lack of trust in the media is far from new. It has been nearly 20 years since a majority of Americans said that they had a great deal of trust in the media. Since 2003, that response has been the minority.
“Americans’ confidence in the media has been anemic for nearly two decades, and Gallup’s latest findings further document that distrust,” Megan Brenan writes in her summary for Gallup’s website. “The current level of public trust in the media’s full, fair and accurate reporting of the news is the second lowest on record. This new confidence reading follows Gallup’s historically low confidence in both TV news and newspapers in June and a new low in December’s annual rating of the honesty and ethics of television reporters. Newspaper reporters received similarly low ratings in the same poll.”
