The Insight: Americans’ trust in the news media is rising. What’s behind the shift?

For the first time in almost a decade, Americans are trusting the media more, according to new data from polling giant Gallup (Center bias).

The Insight provides you the full picture of facts and viewpoints on a top issue for Americans each week, powered by your questions and balanced answers from our multipartisan news team.

The Questions

Is this a rebound in overall media trust, or mainly a rebound among Republicans?

Democrats’ trust in the media fell for the fourth year in a row, while Independents’ and Republicans’ trust rose.

Americans’ overall trust in their news sources rose to 33%, from last year's record low of 28%. Republican trust jumped from 8% to 22% and Independents ticked up to 31%, while Democratic trust dipped from 51% to 50%.

Looking at the dates, a possible explanation appears: Democrats lost confidence after Israel began bombing Gaza, and Republicans gained confidence after the US and Israel started bombing Iran (notice how Dems stopped losing confidence around the same time).

It’s also worth noting that the survey was conducted Sept. 1-17, before some outlets were banned from the White House.

What changed among Republicans in the last year?

Independents’ trust in the media had been rising for a few years. But Republicans’ bottomed out last year, before a never-before-seen type of rebound this year.

Is it as simple as “the media is getting more conservative”? There are signs of a shift, such as major editorial changes at CBS News and the Washington Post. But AllSides ratings still hold that the majority of US news sources lean to the left.

“Americans’ confidence in the news media has pulled back from last year’s record low, but trust remains historically weak and polarized,” according to Gallup. “The partisan trends also reveal a somewhat different political environment toward the media in Trump’s second term than in his first.”

It continued: “Republicans’ already dampened trust fell sharply during Trump’s 2016 campaign amid his attacks on the press as biased and ‘fake news’ but then recovered somewhat in 2018, rising to 21%, similar to today's 22%. Democrats’ trust moved more strongly in the opposite direction at that time, with their trust rising from 51% in 2016 to 72% in 2017 and a record-high 76% in 2018. Whether that shift reflected a defensive stance toward the media on the part of Democrats or approval of its performance as a government watchdog was unclear.” So there’s been a jump, but it’s not like most people trust the media now. The majority of Republicans and Independents still do not, as well as half of Democrats, according to the data.

Perhaps it’s just a partial regression toward a standard baseline, not a true shift in institutional faith. Perhaps some conservatives have noticed what they see as a decrease in liberal bias, and a rise in the success of alt media like podcasts, where the top performers are more often centrist (Joe Rogan), conservative (Tucker Carlson), or anti-establishment than they are left-wing.

Another possibility is that as Republicans increasingly disapprove of Trump, they are less likely to share his adversarial attitude toward the media.

Are Americans changing their views of the media, or changing which media they consider trustworthy?

It’s unclear, but more signs point to the latter than the former.

Which media people rely on has changed drastically in the 21st century. More people are consuming podcasts, TikToks, and YouTube videos to get their news. Meanwhile, local TV news and newspapers have been in free fall for years. Consumers are craving authenticity and direct connection with creators – something that the old ways of news consumption don’t facilitate nearly as well as the new ones do.

As laid out above, trust in US media is still quite low. It’s possible that Americans are increasingly turning to a chosen few “trusted” sources. This can increase trust, but also polarization, as people seal themselves inside intellectual filter bubbles.

And while trust in the media has risen, confidence in US press freedom has actually fallen in the last year, Gallup says – a drop driven mostly by Democrats.

What concrete steps are newsrooms taking to actually regain public trust?

People might strongly trust their chosen podcast or YouTube channel, while still being skeptical of just about anything else. Some news organizations are taking intentional steps toward changing that.

Radical transparency

Sources like AllSides and our friends at Tangle (Center) are consistently transparent about the bias of writers and sources, which helps readers identify different points of view in the media.

Many news organizations have also adopted the principles of The Trust Project, which help readers understand the machinations of news and how information may be skewed.

Consistent audience feedback and engagement

Newsweek (Center) recently added a “Fairness Meter” to its articles, which “allows readers to hold us publicly accountable by rating an article's fairness in one of three ways—Leans Left, Fair, and Leans Right.”

Sources like Semafor (Lean Left) and others are leaning heavily into events, where readers can witness journalism and storytelling in real time and engage directly with their information providers.

Auditing their coverage

Several major news sources have also hired AllSides to conduct bias audits of their content – studies and surveys that help newsrooms understand how their audiences perceive their news, and flag issues with bias or trust that the news organization can take steps to correct.

What does “trust in media” mean to you? Send us an email.