Who says Americans disagree on everything? Some truths are so obvious that they even transcend partisan lines — and distrust of the media has become common ground in the US. Gallup looks back at the media more specifically in its data on trust and institutions, and discovers that the media industry has fallen to new depths:
Americans’ confidence in two facets of the news media — newspapers and television news — has fallen to all-time low points. Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news. Both readings are down five percentage points since last year. …
A majority of Americans have expressed confidence in newspapers only once — in 1979, when 51% did. But there is a wide margin between that and the second-highest readings of 39% in 1973 and 1990. The trend average for newspapers is 30%, well above the latest reading of 16%, which is the first time the measure has fallen below 20%. The percentage of Americans who say they have “very little” or volunteer that they have no confidence is currently the highest on record, at 46%.
Confidence in television news has never been higher than its initial 46% reading in 1993 and has averaged 27%, considerably higher than the current 11%. This is the fourth consecutive year that confidence in TV news is below 20%. And for just the second time in the trend, a majority of Americans, 53%, now say they have very little or no confidence at all in TV news.
Axios noticed this in Gallup’s comprehensive look at institutional trust a couple of weeks ago, too. At the time, there wasn’t enough granular data to do any extensive analysis, but Axios concluded that Republicans had largely driven the media distrust over the last several years. I questioned that conclusion at the time:
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In the first place, these numbers don’t get this low from Republicans alone. Only 5% of Republicans have confidence in newspapers, down three over the last year, but newspapers lost seven points among independents to get to 12% over the last year, and dropped three points among Democrats. For TV news, confidence among Republicans actually rose two points to 8%, while dropping five points among indies to also hit 8% and six points among Democrats to 20%. In no partisan demo do media varieties get any level of significant confidence, and it’s well worth noting that Gallup itself doesn’t assign blame for this confidence loss in media to partisanship.
Gallup drills down into their data and makes similar findings. While Democrats had a spike of trust in both newspapers and TV news during the Trump administration, trust in both among Democrats has fallen off sharply since Biden took office — while trust among Republicans and independents have declined steadily regardless of who’s in the Oval Office:
Confidence in TV news follows a similar pattern, with Democrats expressing higher confidence than Republicans and independents. However, Democrats’ and independents’ confidence ratings are down significantly from last year and are now at historical low points — 20% and 8%, respectively. Meanwhile, the 8% of Republicans with a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in television news is not statistically different from last year’s 6% record low.
Democrats’ trust in newspapers has hit a six-year low of 35% — not quite as low as 2016’s 28%, but still more in the <40% norm of the last twenty years. Their trust in television news has hit an all-time low of 20%, two points lower than their previous nadir in 2014. Democrats’ trust still runs higher than that of Republicans and independents, but trust in media has become an outlier position in all three partisan populations.
At the time the topline numbers for this data came out earlier in the month, media outlets complained about the partisan undermining of their reputations by Republicans. Perhaps this data will underscore that the real problem is their own partisanship and the serial failures of narrative journalism over direct and factual reporting. Media outlets should spend less time posing as “fact checkers” and more time as “fact presenters.” The elimination of narrative journalism would go a long way to restoring their credibility, or at least make a pretty good first step.
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