Reining in bias can increase trust — Newsweek.com grew immensely in web traffic in the 5 years after its shift from a Lean Left to Center AllSides rating.
Trust in U.S. news remains very low — just 30% of Americans say they trust the news in 2025, virtually unchanged from 2024, according to the Reuters Oxford 2025 Digital News Report. However, some news brands, like Newsweek (Center), have found reining in bias helps bolster trust and drive traffic.
Out of 48 countries, the U.S. still ranks close to last in news trust, coming in 40th. Just eight of these countries experience lower news trust than the United States, including Morocco, Greece, Hungary, and France.
Since 2015, the highest percentage of those polled who trusted news in the U.S. was a meager 38% (in 2017), and the lowest was 26% (in 2022).
And while trust in news remains low, perceptions of bias are high. In 2023, for instance, only 9% of Americans (an all-time low) said they did not see much political bias in the news, according to Knight Foundation/Gallup. In addition, less than half of Americans trust 12 out of 13 national news brands included in the Oxford/Reuters survey — the majority of which are considered legacy news and AllSides rates Lean Left, based on surveys of Americans and a panel of experts.
RELATED: AllSides Media Bias Chart
Some brands have found reining in bias helps bolster news trust. Newsweek, for instance, was rated Lean Left or Left by AllSides from 2016 to 2020. Similarweb’s U.S. web traffic data shows Newsweek.com grew immensely in the 5 years after its shift to a Center rating, which an AllSides Bias Audit commissioned by Newsweek confirmed in 2024. That year, Newsweek.com traffic did not fall below 70 million views, and it reached 111.2 million views in October 2024 — a nearly 120% increase over the 50.7 million views it earned in October 2019, when the outlet was rated Lean Left. According to MediaPost, Newsweek’s political stories generated 86 million page views in 2024, up from just 32 million views in 2023.
In addition, YouGov’s annual Trust in Media survey found the number of people who rate Newsweek as “trustworthy” has steadily increased from 2022 to 2024; during that time, it reduced the percentage of people who see it as “very untrustworthy” by over half. It also saw gains among the right: in 2022, 24% of Republicans called Newsweek “very untrustworthy,” whereas just 14% did in 2024, and just 7% in 2025.
Apart from Newsweek, AllSides helped newsrooms in LA, NYC, and Maine go from being perceived as Lean Left to Center in just two years through regular consulting and bias audits like the one Newsweek underwent. As local newsrooms, these Center-rated, outlets are among the most trusted across all age groups, with 59% of Americans saying they trust local TV stations and 55% saying they trust local newspapers, according to Reuters/Oxford (Pew Research Center (Center) actually measured the trust in all local outlets as high as 80% among Americans).
RELATED: AllSides’ Impact on News Nationwide
Biased news is okay — diverse views are good — but only if it doesn’t overwhelm the landscape, which is the case today. As social media begins to overwhelm TV as a top news source, news outlets must take careful stock of how to retain audiences, and that can include addressing the issue of bias.
Julie Mastrine is the Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings at AllSides. She has a Lean Right bias.
This piece was reviewed by Andrew Weinzierl, Bias Research Manager and Data Journalist.
