A new poll shows that the level of trust Americans have in mainstream media outlets to fairly and accurately report the news has dropped to the lowest level in more than 50 years since Gallup began tracking media trust in the United States.
In the latest Gallup survey, just under 1 in 3 Americans said they trust the mainstream news media “a great deal” or “a fair amount,” while more than one-third say they don’t trust the media “at all.”
Respondents were asked: “In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media — such as newspapers, TV and radio — when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly”:
- 31% said “a great deal” or “a fair amount.”
- 33% said “not very much.”
- 36% said “none at all.”
Gallup’s initial survey of Americans’ trust in the media, conducted in the 1970s, showed that almost 70% of Americans at the time had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the news media. Those numbers have steadily declined in the decades since despite some spots of improvement, the most recent being in 2017 and 2018.
The poll also shows a strong partisan contrast, with more than half of Republicans saying they have no trust in mainstream media while fewer than one in ten Democrats say the same.
When asked how much they trust the mass media’s reporting:
- 59% of Republicans said “none at all.”
- 42% of independents said “none at all.”
- 6% of Democrats said “none at all.”
For their latest survey, Gallup polled 1,007 adults across the country from Sept. 3-15, 2024 with a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.