Trust in Media Sinks to All-Time Low — Even Among Democrats

A new Gallup poll shows that Americans’ trust in the media has sunk to its lowest level since the pollster started surveying the topic in the 1970s.

This latest poll was conducted via telephone, using both landline and cell phones, from September 2-16, 2025, with a random sample of 1,000 U.S. adults from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and the samples weighted “to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, population density, party identification, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both and cell phone mostly),” according to Gallup’s polling memo.

The total sample has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.

The specific question polled was, “In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media — such as newspapers, TV and radio — when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly — a great deal, a fair amount, not very much or none at all?”

Only 28% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, the poll found — down from 31% in October 2024 and 40% in September 2020. This “marks the first time the measure has fallen below 30%,” according to Gallup.

Seventy percent said they have “not very much” confidence or “none at all.”

The full breakdown was as follows: great deal 8%, fair amount 20%, not very much 36%, none at all 34%, and no opinion 1%.

The polling memo noted the stark downward trend:

When Gallup began measuring trust in the news media in the 1970s, between 68% and 72% of Americans expressed confidence in reporting. However, by the next reading in 1997, public confidence had fallen to 53%. Media trust remained just above 50% until it dropped to 44% in 2004, and it has not risen to the majority level since. The highest reading in the past decade was 45% in 2018, which came just two years after confidence had collapsed amid the divisive 2016 presidential campaign.

The number of Americans who express trust in media reporting hit “record lows” across the partisan spectrum, Gallup found.

Republicans’ confidence in media has trailed that of Democrats and Independents throughout the decades of Gallup’s polling, and hasn’t been above 21% in a decade. This latest survey showed Republican confidence down in the single digits (8%) for the first time.

In contrast, Democrats have traditionally expressed a notably higher level of confidence in media than those on the right, but still dropped to record lows in this poll, going back down to the previous low from 2016 of “the narrowest of majorities” (51%) saying they have trust in the media.

For Independents, a majority of this group has not expressed trust in the media since 2003, and they maintained last year’s historical low of 27% in this new poll.

The problem of eroding trust in media seems likely to worsen, Gallup reported, with distrust in media higher among younger generations, noting, “Given younger Democrats’ relatively low confidence in the media, overall trust could decrease further in the future, unless Republican trust rebounds.”

“With confidence fractured along partisan and generational lines, the challenge for news organizations is not only to deliver fair and accurate reporting but also to regain credibility across an increasingly polarized and skeptical public,” Gallup concluded.