Last year, a Gallup poll found Americans’ trust in their news media had fallen to the lowest point in half a century—when Gallup’s pollsters first began tracking it. In 1972, some two-thirds of Americans had a great deal of trust in the media; today, fewer than one-third do. And about a third say, they have no trust in it at all—almost 60 percent among Republicans. The prospects for the future are worse: Cynicism toward the media is going up among people younger than 50, regardless of their party affiliation.
What’s happened?
Benjamin Toff is an associate professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. Toff says Americans, like people all around the world, have lost the trust they have in the news media partly because they’re now inundated by it. An interminable torrent of news—much of it on social media—has left Americans feeling disoriented and apprehensive about the news. That much, he says, seems clear.
But even as social media has transformed how people get their news everywhere, something distinct seems to be going on in the United States. Americans’ lack of confidence in media seems to be part of a broader convulsion within American society itself: Unlike in some European countries, where people tend to have more faith in both their fellow citizens and their political systems, Americans’ loss of trust in their news media reflects a broader loss of trust in their public institutions as a whole …
Gustav Jönsson: What patterns stand out to you most with Americans’ relationship to the news media?
Annie Spratt
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