Barely one-third of Republicans say they have “some” or “a lot” of trust in the national news media, according to a new Pew Research Center survey that revealed a significant partisan divide on the issue.
The poll, released Monday and conducted in June, found that 35 percent of Americans who consider themselves Republicans or Republican-leaning independents say they have “some” or “a lot” of trust in the information that comes from national news organizations, compared to 78 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who answered that way.
Republicans’ views of the national media plummeted during the Trump years. In January and February 2016, when Donald Trump was running for the GOP nomination and when Barack Obama was finishing his final term, 70 percent of Republicans said they trusted the national media. That percentage fell throughout the Trump administration – and has dropped 14 points since late 2019, according to Pew.
The 43-point partisan gap between Republicans and Democrats “is the largest of any time” since 2016, Pew said.
“And it grows even wider – to 53 points – between liberal Democrats (83 percent) and conservative Republicans (30 percent),” a Pew analysis of the data said.
Republicans are more trusting of local news organizations, although still less so than Democrats. Two-thirds (66 percent) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they have “some” or “a lot” of trust in the information that comes from local media, compared to 84 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents.
Overall, 58 percent of all adults say they trust the national media, while 75 percent of all adults trust the local media.
Neither party trusts information that comes from social media. Nearly one-fifth (19 percent) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they have “some” or “a lot” of trust in the information that comes from social media, compared to 34 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who answered that way.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/David Sacks
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
