America’s Trust In the Media Has Cratered to an All-Time Low

It would appear that the media has made itself irrelevant to the American people by a large degree. 

According to a new Gallup poll, a strikingly small number of the American public actually have any faith at all in the media, almost in line with the amount of trust people have in the Federal government: 

Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly,” similar to last year’s 32%. Americans’ trust in the media — such as newspapers, television and radio — first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year.

For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express “not very much” confidence.

It’s been a striking, multi-decade decline, as Gallup notes. It originally asked back in 1972. Back then, trust was in the 70s, even peaking at 72 percent in 1976, but as you can see from the graph above, a steep decline began that had it down to 53 percent by 1997.

Trust in the media took its largest dip in 2016, when Trump was the popular Republican choice. The media shamelessly lied consistently, whittling away its support from the American public. It would recover slightly in 2018, but around 2020 the decline began anew. Now, in 2024, trust is only at 31 percent. 

Gallup notes that there is a huge partisan divide in trust. Republicans trust the media at only 12 percent and Independents are only at 27 percent. Democrats, naturally, make up the bulk of America’s trust in the media at 57 percent. This is telling, as it displays that the media’s bias is pleasing to leftists. Still, the fact that the number isn’t higher shows that even many on the left don’t trust it due to its obvious bias. 

As far as age groups go, the Boomer generation and older seem to have the most trust in the media at 43 percent, while Millennials and Gen Z have the least at 26 percent. Gen X has only 33 percent trust in the media. 

Gallup notes that the trust in the media is below even America’s trust in the federal government: 

The news media is the least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process. The legislative branch of the federal government, consisting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, is rated about as poorly as the media, with 34% trusting it.

In contrast, majorities of U.S. adults express at least a fair amount of trust in their local government to handle local problems (67%), their state government to address state problems (55%), and the American people as a whole when it comes to making judgments under our democratic system about the issues facing the country (54%).

Between 40% and 48% of Americans trust the judicial branch headed by the U.S. Supreme Court, men and women in political life, the federal government’s handling of international problems, and the executive branch led by the president. Fewer U.S. adults trust the federal government’s handling of domestic problems (37%).

This should be a wake-up call for the corporate media, but it’s highly unlikely the message will sink in for some time, if ever. The media is driving itself into irrelevance by continuing to lie to the American people during an age where said lies are easily disprovable thanks to the internet. 

It’s also thanks to the internet that the media is becoming increasingly unnecessary as citizen journalists have become faster and more accurate. The internet allows anyone with a camera to become an eyewitness who gets the news out quickly, sometimes going live to show it happening in real time. 

At this point, the media a lumbering propaganda machine with decreasing value.