Americans With No Trust In The Mass Media Hits All-Time High In Latest Gallup Poll

Gallup on Thursday released its annual poll of Americans’ confidence in the U.S. media and found that the number of people saying they have no trust “at all” in mass media had hit an all-time high of 39 percent.

The 2023 poll of 1,016 adult Americans from across the country registered an all-time high number of respondents who said described their trust in mass media as “none at all.” In 2016, 27 percent of those polled answered “none at all,” while in 2023 that number shot up to 39 percent – a devastating indictment of the public’s belief in established public facts and narratives.

The poll also found that only 32 percent of those polled had a “great deal” of trust that the “mass media” reports “news fully, accurately and fairly” – matching the all-time low established in 2016.

The poll’s summary, written by Gallup’s Megan Brenan, lays out in detail the ominous findings:

The latest poll, conducted Sept. 1-23, marks just the second time, along with last year, that the share of Americans who have no confidence at all in the media has surpassed the percentage with a great deal or fair amount of trust.

Gallup first asked this question in 1972 and has tracked it nearly every year since 1997. Trust ranged from 68% to 72% in three readings in the 1970s, and though it had declined by the late 1990s, it remained at the majority level until 2004, when it fell to 44%. After rebounding slightly to 50% in 2005, it has not risen above 47% since.

Trust cratered to 32 percent in 2016 as well, but began to rebound some in the following years. In 2018, 45 percent of those polled said they had a “great deal” of trust in mass media, but that number steadily declined back down to the 32 percent registered this year.

Via Gallup

The poll’s summary noted that a major factor in the decline in trust was Democrats losing faith in the media. “Democrats’ confidence in the mass media has consistently outpaced Republicans’, but the latest gap of 47 points is the narrowest since 2016. Democrats’ trust in the media has fallen 12 points over the past year, to 58%, and compares with 11% among Republicans and 29% among independents.”

In 2016, Republicans’ trust in media dipped from 32 percent in 2015 to 14 percent, driving down the average to the record low. GOP faith in mass media has only dipped further since, hitting its lowest number in 2020 at only 10 percent and registering at 11 percent in 2023.

Via Gallup

Gallup noted that Americans’ distrust in media coincides with a lack of faith in other institutions as well:

This low confidence reading for the fourth estate comes at a time when trust in each of the three branches of the federal government is also low.

In addition, Gallup in June found confidence readings in both TV news and newspapers that were near their historical lows and last December found a record-low-tying rating of the honesty and ethics of journalists.

The poll carries a margin of error of 4 percent.

Read the full poll summary here.