Only 11 Percent of Americans Say They Have a ‘Great Deal’ of Confidence in TV News: Poll

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Only 11% of Americans expressed a “great deal” of confidence in TV news, according to an annual Gallup survey released on Tuesday.

In a recent poll of Americans’ confidence in 16 major nationwide institutions, Gallup spoke to Democrats, independents, and Republicans.

Respondents were asked, “Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one — a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little.”

Congress rated lowest, as only seven percent of respondents said they had a great deal of confidence in lawmakers in Washington.

Television news came in second to last with 11% of the poll’s respondents answering they have a “great deal” of confidence in the institution.

Surprisingly, when broken down by party affiliation, Republicans expressed a small uptick in support for TV news in 2022 than they did last year. Confidence among Democrats and independents dropped.

In 2021, six percent of Republicans polled by Gallup expressed confidence in TV news. Eight percent of Republicans polled this year said they had a great deal of confidence in TV news.

Meanwhile, 26% of Democrats expressed a great deal of confidence in TV news in 2021. That number dropped to 20% this year.

Confidence in TV news among independent voters dropped from 13% in 2021 to eight percent in this year’s survey.

Gallup also asked respondents to rate their confidence in newspapers.

Overall, only 16 percent of Americans expressed a great deal of confidence in print news. That is a decrease of five points from last year when 21% of Americans said they had a great deal of confidence in newspapers.

Gallup found confidence in America’s institutions dropped across the board this year with the exception of organized labor, which held steady at 28%.

The pollster noted:

Americans are less confident in major U.S. institutions than they were a year ago, with significant declines for 11 of the 16 institutions tested and no improvements for any. The largest declines in confidence are 11 percentage points for the Supreme Court — as reported in late June before the court issued controversial rulings on gun laws and abortion — and 15 points for the presidency, matching the 15-point drop in President Joe Biden’s job approval rating since the last confidence survey in June 2021.

The most trusted institution in the country remained small businesses, although that confidence dropped from 70% in 2021 to 68% this year.

The poll was conducted among 1,015 U.S. adults across all 50 states from June 1 to the 10th. The pollster notes “the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.”