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Americans lost faith in the media over the last year, according to a new survey, trusting only Congress less among major American institutions.
Asked if they held a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in television news, 16 percent of Americans responded in the affirmative, down from 18 percent in 2020 and 2019. Another 21 percent said they trusted newspapers, down from 24 percent in 2020 and from 23 percent in 2019.
The shift coincided with the era of Donald Trump’s presidency, when trust in the media was often juxtaposed with trust in Trump’s presidency. It also coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic. The survey indicated the pandemic briefly inspired Americans to become more trusting of more institutions, though media was among those that benefited least.
The number of Americans who said they trusted in the medical system bumped up from 36 percent in 2019 to 51 percent in 2020, according to the survey, before declining to 44 percent this year. Trust in church or organized religion increased from 36 percent
Institutions that saw the smallest change across the years included Congress — which saw a pandemic-induced bump from 11 percent in 2019 to 13 percent in 2020, before the figure returned to 12 percent this year — and the White House. Americans who said they trusted in the “presidency” stood at 38 percent in both 2019 and 2021. The pandemic inspired 39 percent to say they trusted the institution in 2020.
Gallup conducted the survey from June 1 to July 5 as part of its research on public confidence in U.S. institutions, which it began tracking in 1973. The study included 1,381 adults surveyed by phone and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.