Trust in US news media hits record low – poll

Only 31% of Americans say they have confidence that the press reports news fairly and accurately

Less than a third of Americans trust US news media, a record low figure, according to a new Gallup poll published Monday.

This year’s poll showed a 1 percentage point drop of Americans who believe the media reports the news fully and accurately from last year. The trend has been on a downward trajectory since 2018.

For the third consecutive year, the number of Americans who claim to completely distrust the media remained higher than those who trust it. The new poll, however, demonstrated a slight drop, with 36% of respondents expressing complete distrust versus 39% in 2023.

Meanwhile, those having “not very much” confidence in the media grew to reach 33% this year.

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A large gap remains between Republicans and Democrats, with only 12% of the former expressing trust in media reporting against 54% of the latter. However, the partisan gap has actually been narrowing in the last couple of years. According to data aggregated by Gallup, in 2022, for instance, some 70% of Democrats expressed confidence in the media. 

The pollster sampled 1,007 adult Americans living across the country. The survey was conducted over the first two weeks of September via phone interviews. Respondents were picked randomly for the survey.

Gallup first asked Americans the question back in 1972 and has conducted the media trust poll on an almost yearly basis since 1997. While in the 1970s, the trust rate hovered around the 70% mark, it had deteriorated to around 55% by the late 1990s, and has continued to drop over the past two decades.