Trust in national and local media outlets has dropped to a new low when it comes to Republicans and those who lean to the right, according to a new poll.
Democrats and those who lean to the left have remained trusting in national outlets. Their trust has only declined five percentage points, to 78 percent, during the same period of time.
Both groups are more trusting of local news organizations. Approximately 66 percent of Republicans or people who lean Republican trust local outlets—down from 79 percent in 2016—and 84 percent of Democrats or those who lean Democrat trust local outlets—virtually the same as five years ago.
Conservative trust in all outlets has been dropping for years, with a sharp decline of 14 percentage points between the last time the survey was done in late 2019 to the latest one. Overall trust is also down, with far fewer saying they have “a lot” of trust in national news outlets—just 12 percent, down from 65 percent in late 2019.
The survey of 10,606 U.S. adults was done across two weeks in June. All respondents are members of the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel. A margin of error wasn’t noted.
Republicans for years have complained about the bias some outlets display. A number of outlets openly acknowledged being against former President Donald Trump, likely contributing to the continued decline in trust.
Another recent poll indicated that many Americans did not trust media reporting on the situation in Afghanistan.
Over half of the respondents said the situation was worse than the media was portraying, compared with 11 percent who said the situation was actually better than reported. The remaining respondents said the situation was about the same as the media coverage portrayed it.
The survey of 1,000 likely American voters was conducted on Aug. 24 and Aug. 25. It had a margin of error of plus/minus 3 percentage points.
