by WorldTribune Staff, October 2, 2025 Real World News
Americans’ trust in legacy media has sunk to a new low, according to Gallup polling.
Gallup on Thursday released results of its annual survey of U.S. adults which found 70% of respondents have either “not very much” confidence or “none at all” in the U.S. major media.
When Gallup began the survey in 1972, 7 in 10 adults had either a “fair amount” (50%) or “great deal” (18%) of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.
This year’s survey marks the first time that fewer than 3 in 10 U.S. adults have expressed trust in the news they’re being fed by the legacy media.
Confidence in media first fell below the 50% level in 2004, and hasn’t returned to that level since.
Today, 28% say they have at least a fair amount of trust in the media, down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago.
All political affiliation groups registered record-low confidence this year, though the legacy media’s well-documented leftist bias continues to buoy Democrats’ trust. Even so, barely half (51%) of Democrats have confidence in the news media today.
Although older adults have “significantly more faith” in the media than do younger Americans, trust in media is steadily declining among all age groups, Gallup reports:
“In the early 2000s, Americans in all four age groups expressed relatively similar levels of confidence in the media, at just above 50%. Since then, confidence among all four groups has gradually declined — but less so among Americans aged 65 and older.”
The annual Gallup survey was conducted September 2-16, polling adults, ages 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. It has a margin of sampling error of ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Gallup’s ‘trust in media’ hits new low; Dramatic drop since annual polls began in ‘72 added by Editor Two on
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