Fewer than 1 in 3 Americans trust the media to report the news fairly, a Gallup poll found.
A record-low 31% say they have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence in the media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly," Gallup results released Monday show.
That finding is similar to last year's 32%, a share first registered in 2016.
The latest Gallup survey also discovered that the mass media is the least trusted group among 10 U.S. civic and political institutions involved in the democratic process. The federal government's legislative branch, consisting of the Senate and House, is rated about as poorly as the media at 34%.
The Gallup survey found that more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount; 33% of Americans express "not very much" confidence in the media.
In a partisan breakdown of the latest results, 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents, and 12% of Republicans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. Independents' trust matches the record low in 2022, while Democrats' and Republicans' trust shared are similar to their historical lows.
Majorities (ranging from 54% to 82%) of Democrats express a great deal or fair amount of trust in all but two of the entities: the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government.
Majorities of Republicans have confidence in the judicial branch and state and local governments.
Americans were first asked about their trust in the media in 1972 and three times overall during that decade, when trust ranged from 68% to 72%.
In Gallup's next media readings, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, smaller majorities of 51% to 55% say they trusted the media.
Majorities of Americans express at least a fair amount of trust in their local government to handle local problems (67%), their state government to address state problems (55%), and U.S. citizens as a whole when it comes to making judgments under our democratic system about the issues facing the country (54%).
Those are the only entities earning trust from more than half of U.S. adults.
The latest Gallup survey was conducted Sept. 3-15 among 1,007 adults in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.