Americans trust the media even less than they’re willing to admit, a comparison of what they say publicly and what they think privately reveals.
Polls have long shown low trust of the media – especially when it comes to election news - with more recent surveys showing that their trust is continuing to continuing to decline.
However, results of a new national study of American adults, conducted by the think tank Populace with the help of Gradient and YouGov, suggests that distrust of the media is actually much greater than traditional polls have found:
“In general, Americans are overstating their trust in the media. Whereas 24% of people publicly agree they trust the media to tell the truth, in private only 7% truly believe it.”
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“Results from every generation reveal a double-digit gap between what people are willing to say publicly and what they privately think.”
Thus, while about one in four Americans say they trust the media, only about one in 14 truly do trust the news they’re being fed.
By age group, the gap between claims and actual beliefs is largest for Millennials (26 percentage points) and smallest (but still considerable) for Gen Z respondents (12 percentage points).
“Democrats are the least forthcoming in their evaluations of the honesty of the media,” the study finds, reporting that 42% say publicly that they trust the media, but only 9% do so privately (a 33-point gap).
Republicans and Independents are less likely to trust the media – and more willing to admit it, among political affiliations. Just 3% of both groups actually trust the media, but about one in six say they do, resulting in roughly a 16-point gap.
Black Americans show the largest gap (23 points) among racial groups between what they say and what they really believe about the media’s trustworthiness, the study finds. While 29% of Blacks say they trust the media, a mere six percent actually do.
Asian Americans are the most likely to both have (16%) and publicly profess (32%) trust in the media.
The gap for other racial groups ranged from 14-17 points, with the percentage that privately believe they can trust the media in the single-digits for each.
Populace’s Social Pressure Index study is based on a nationally representative sample of American adults, including more than 19,000 completed responses. The study aggregates respondents’ answers to a series of indirect questions regarding their beliefs to determine their “private” beliefs, then contrasts that with their answers to direct questions about whether they agree or disagree that they trust the media to tell them the truth.
