

After hitting a record low last year, Americans’ trust in the nation’s legacy media has now sunk even lower, Gallup reported Thursday, releasing results of its annual survey of U.S. adults.
When Gallup began the survey in 1972, 7 in 10 adults had either a “fair amount” (50%) or “great deal” (18%) of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.
Today, 7- 10 have either “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%).
This year’s survey marks the first time that fewer than 3 in 10 U.S. adults have expressed trust in the news they’re being fed by the media. Confidence fell below 50% level in 2004, and hasn’t returned to that level since then.
Today, 28% say they have at least a fair amount of trust in the media, down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago.
All political affiliation groups registered record-low confidence this year, though the legacy media’s well-documented liberal bias continues to buoy Democrats’ trust. Even so, barely half (51%) of Democrats have confidence in the news media today.
Although older adults have “significantly more faith” in the media than do younger Americans, trust in media is steadily declining among all age groups, Gallup reports:
“In the early 2000s, Americans in all four age groups expressed relatively similar levels of confidence in the media, at just above 50%. Since then, confidence among all four groups has gradually declined — but less so among Americans aged 65 and older.”
The annual Gallup survey was conducted September 2-16, polling adults, ages 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. It has a margin of sampling error of ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.