Trust in media among Americans has plummeted to a historic low, according to a new poll from Gallup.
Only 32 percent of Americans say they have a “great deal” or a “fair amount of trust in “mass media”—defined as newspapers, television, and radio and specifically in regards to their reporting the news “fully, accurately, and fairly.”
In 1976, this was at 72 percent, the highest on record since Gallup began conducting the poll in 1968.
Trust in media previously declined to 32 percent in 2016 but had worked its way back up to 45 percent in 2018. That gain has been completely lost, and has returned to where it was in 2016.
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Furthermore, the amount of Americans that say they have no trust in media at all has been gradually rising since 1998, reaching a record high of 39 percent as of September.
Gallup also polled respondents about what political party they belong to, if any. Democrats have consistently proved to be more trusting in the media than Republicans and Independents.
But the Democrats are largely driving the downward trend in trust. In 2016, 51 percent of Democrats said they had a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in media; that shot up to 76 at the height of the Trump years, but it has declined back down to 58 percent as of September 2023.
Independents have declined to 29 percent and Republicans are at a 11 percent. These are both close to their all-time lows, which for Independents occurred in 2022 at 27 percent and for Republicans in 2020 at 10 percent.
Last year, Gallup found that young Democrats trust the media much less than their older counterparts—51 percent of 18-34 year-old Democrats versus 79 percent of 55+ Democrats. This would imply that the downward trend in trust is being driven specifically by young Democrats, possibly because of the populist and anti-interventionist sentiments sown by the Bernie Sanders movement.
Watch Patrick Bet-David highlight how cable TV is dying as a result of streaming technology and the three reasons why it’s still alive:
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