13/10/2025
“Americans’ confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago. Meanwhile, seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%). [..] When Gallup began measuring trust in the news media in the 1970s, between 68% and 72% of Americans expressed confidence in reporting. However, by the next reading in 1997, public confidence had fallen to 53%. Media trust remained just above 50% until it dropped to 44% in 2004, and it has not risen to the majority level since. The highest reading in the past decade was 45% in 2018, which came just two years after confidence had collapsed amid the divisive 2016 presidential campaign. The latest 28% confidence reading, from a Sept. 2-16 poll, marks the first time the measure has fallen below 30%. [..] There is a clear generational divide in trust in the media that has grown particularly stark over the past decade, according to an analysis of three-year aggregated data to increase sample sizes. In the most recent three-year period, spanning 2023 to 2025, 43% of adults aged 65 and older trust the media, compared with no more than 28% in any younger age group. 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.”
Americans' trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly is at a new low of 28%.
