Americans’ trust in the media has slumped to an all-time low, according to a Gallup survey released Thursday.
Nearly seven in ten Americans say they don’t trust the press — a finding underscored by recent controversies over coverage of the Charlie Kirk assassination and the murder of a Ukrainian on a light rail in North Carolina.
Just 28% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in newspapers, television, and radio to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly” compared to 31% last year, according to a Gallup survey released Thursday. By contrast, 34% say they have no trust at all, and another 36% say they have “not very much” confidence.
Confidence in the media breaks sharply along party lines. Republican trust in the media has fallen to 8%, the first time it has dropped into single digits. Among Democrats, 51% say they have a great or fair amount of trust in the media, while only 9% say they have no trust. Independents are more divided, with 27% expressing trust and 32% reporting none at all.
Trust in the media also shows a clear generational divide that has widened over the past decade, according to three-year aggregated data. From 2023 to 2025, 43% of adults 65 and older said they trust the media, compared with no more than 28% in any younger age group, Gallup found.
Americans’ overall confidence in the media has been declining steadily since Gallup first began tracking it in 1972. At the time, 68% said they had a great deal of trust, while just 6% said they had no faith in the institution at all.
Despite the growing trend of left-wing extremist violence, between Jan. 21 and June 21, news outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS used labels such as “far right” 1,222 times compared with just 86 mentions of “far left” or similar labels, according to the Media Research Center.
Moreover, corporate media outlets largely ignored the stabbing death of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte, North Carolina, for several days, despite news of the brutal incident going viral on social media, a Daily Caller News Foundation review found in September. CNN also faced criticism for appearing to downplay anti-fascist messages found on ammunition near the site of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination, referring to the markings as “a range of phrases related to cultural issues.”
Paramount agreed to pay $36 million to President Donald Trump after he sued CBS for allegedly manipulating former Vice President Kamala Harris’ interview on 60 Minutes in the weeks before the 2024 election. Skydance Media, which is set to acquire Paramount in an $8 billion deal, has pledged to the Trump administration that it would promote “unbiased journalism” and a “diverse array of viewpoints on television” under the new merger.
Gallup’s poll was conducted between Sept. 2 and 16 and surveyed a random sample of 1,000 adults from all 50 states.
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