Polls show that Americans’ trust in news reporting is at an all-time low. And while the decline has many causes, it reflects both the changing media landscape and the values of media consumers.
Nearly 250 years since the principle was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, a majority of Americans still agree that a free press is crucial to a democratic society, according to polling by the Pew Research Center. But how they feel about the existing press is a different matter.
The same polls show that only one-third of Americans believes the country’s media report the news objectively. And a September Gallup poll reveals that Americans’ overall trust in mass media has declined to an all-time low of 32%.
Much of the narrative around declining faith in media has been shaped by political partisanship. The last time that America saw such low levels of media confidence was in 2016, when Donald Trump amplified longstanding conservative complaints about liberal media bias by attacking critical coverage of his presidential campaign as “fake news.”
Accordingly, self-identified Republicans report less trust in media, reaching a low of 11% compared with 58% for Democrats.
However, partisan trends don’t capture the whole picture. While partisan divergence in media confidence significantly widened during the presidency of Republican George W. Bush, overall trust in media institutions has been declining for supporters of both parties as well as independents since Gallup first began tracking it in the 1970s.
The rise of partisan cable news networks in the 1990s and digital news, along with social media in the 2000s, has reflected and exacerbated this trend. And dissatisfaction with perceived bias in coverage of conflicts such as the Iraq War or Israel's invasion of Gaza has also reduced trust in traditional news sources among left-leaning Americans, often driving them toward unreliable alternative sources.
As Americans lose trust in traditional media, they also engage less with it. While over half of adults in the U.S. now report getting their news from social media, audiences and advertising revenue have shrunk when it comes to newspapers and TV news.
In fact, part of the story behind declining trust in media is Americans across the political spectrum becoming less interested in news overall. Nearly two-thirds of Americans are experiencing news fatigue while 38% report that they follow the news closely, compared with 51% in 2016.
Do Americans want independent journalism?
The simultaneous loss of trust and interest in news media has raised questions beyond simple accusations of partisan bias. While criticism of the media often focuses on whether the core principles of independent journalism are being upheld, the principles themselves may not be popular.
A recent study by the Media Insight Project found that common journalistic values such as amplifying marginalized voices, holding power to account or increasing public transparency do not enjoy majority support.
In fact, such values may not be as integral to journalism as is commonly believed. As Columbia University journalism professor Michael Schudson writes, the modern idea of journalism as an independent investigative force and a check on government power has been a fairly recent development.
And amid today’s rapid social, political and technological changes, the role that people expect journalism to play in society may once again be shifting.
