If you are reading this, you are probably muttering to yourself about how it is all “fake news.” At least that’s what the latest Gallup poll says about the vast majority of Americans’ views on the media and their confidence in it.
In its latest annual survey on trust in media, Gallup found that only 28 percent of the American public expresses a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in “newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.”
This represents a three-point drop from last year’s survey, and is 12 points lower than what respondents told Gallup just five years ago.
On the other hand, the poll reveals that seven in 10 American adults have little to no trust in mass media, with 34 percent stating they have “none at all” when asked about their confidence in the press to report the news fairly.
While this is part of a decades-long downward trend that has seen U.S. trust in mass media steadily erode, the drop has become more precipitous in recent years. In fact, after just 32 percent of adults said they had at least a fair amount of confidence in the press in 2016, trust in the media spiked up to 45 percent by 2018.
Since then, however, President Donald Trump and his allies in the right-wing media universe have engaged in an aggressive and concerted campaign to discredit the mainstream and legacy press, culminating in his return to the White House and an all-out assault on press freedoms and independence. At the same time, media conglomerations have capitulated to Trump’s threats and demands.
In recent months, the president has pushed for the dismantling of state-funded media and the defunding of public broadcasting, resulting in the shuttering of PBS and NPR stations and the impending extinction of Voice of America.
He has also secured large settlement payoffs from the owners of news networks in response to legally dubious lawsuits, prompting accusations of extortion and bribery and sparking investigations by Democratic lawmakers. The president has also called for talk show hosts who have been critical of him to be fired and canceled, publicly celebrating when those media personalities lose their jobs or are suspended.
Therefore, with Trump relentlessly raging about the “fake news” media that he feels doesn’t treat him “fairly,” it is hardly a surprise that Republicans’ confidence in the American press is down in the basement.
Though their trust in the media hasn’t risen above 21 percent since 2015, only eight percent of Republicans now have confidence in the press – the first time in Gallup’s survey that it has dropped into single digits.
“Independents’ trust has not reached the majority level since 2003, and the latest 27% reading matches last year’s historical low,” Gallup noted, adding: “For Democrats, the narrowest of majorities (51%) now express trust in the media, which is a repeat of the low previously seen in 2016.”
By contrast, when Gallup first began measuring trust in the media in the 1970s, between 68 and 72 percent of Americans said they were confident in the press’ reporting of news. The polling firm would wait roughly twenty years before revisiting the question, only to find that public confidence in the media had dropped to 53 percent in 1997.
Of course, by that time, the conservative talk radio industry – led by Rush Limbaugh – had been incessantly pushing the mantra that the mainstream and broadcast media were biased towards liberals, which led to the 1996 launch of Fox News by Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.
“Media trust remained just above 50% until it dropped to 44% in 2004, and it has not risen to the majority level since. The highest reading in the past decade was 45% in 2018, which came just two years after confidence had collapsed amid the divisive 2016 presidential campaign,” Gallup noted in its most recent survey.
Ultimately, according to Gallup, “generational divides further underscore the erosion” of trust in the media, with older adults still having more faith in the press than younger Americans.
“Given younger Democrats’ relatively low confidence in the media, overall trust could decrease further in the future, unless Republican trust rebounds,” the surveying firm concluded. “With confidence fractured along partisan and generational lines, the challenge for news organizations is not only to deliver fair and accurate reporting but also to regain credibility across an increasingly polarized and skeptical public.”
