Articles of faith
As the threat of fake news mounts amid escalating global conflicts, it appears that faith in America’s newscasters as veritable information sources is dwindling.
This week, a Gallup poll found that only 32% of Americans say that they would trust the mass media — including newspapers, TV, and radio — either “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to report the news accurately and fairly, matching the all-time low that was set in 2016. In that year, coinciding with a bot-ly contested US election, adults were most likely to have “not very much” trust in the media, with 41% taking this stance.
In 2023, however, it seems that people have become yet more jaded by unreliable journalism: a record-high 39% of US adults report having no trust at all in mass media — 28 percentage points more than just 20 years ago. This marks only the second time, along with last year, that no confidence whatsoever has surpassed having even a middling amount of trust in mass media news reporting.
