Trust in the mass media has bottomed out.

Gallup, which has been tracking public trust in newspapers, TV, and radio for over 50 years, revealed Oct. 14 that a plurality (36%) of Americans have no trust at all in the mass media. 33% of respondents said they don't trust the mass media "very much." Only 31% of Americans indicated they trust the media to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly."

Some academics and media outfits have in recent years tried to pin this breakdown of trust on President Donald Trump and on other individuals who have expressed contempt for the mainstream press, such as the late Rush Limbaugh. Although simple and politically expedient, such explanations fail to account for why this decline was under way long before Trump's descent down the golden escalator on June 16, 2015, and the debut of Limbaugh's self-titled show in October 1984.

Extra to considering several proposed drivers of the broader trend, Blaze News spoke to Jacob L. Nelson, associate professor in the University of Utah’s Department of Communication and author of "Imagined Audiences: How Journalists Perceive and Pursue the Public," about both Gallup's findings and what his own research has revealed about Americans' degrading trust.

While there are multiple and in some cases competing explanations for why Americans don't trust the media, one thing is clear: The continuous advancement of brazen falsehoods and deceptive narratives is not helping.

Blaze News has highlighted seven egregious examples of false or misleading reports that have served both to justify Americans' distrust and to illustrate what a trustworthy media might seek to avoid.

Bad diagnosis

Gallup data indicates that the decline in Americans' trust in the mass media has been under way since 1976. Among those signaling a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in the media, there appears to have been a brief rebound from 2000 to 2003, but the downward trend resumed in 2004 — around the time weapons of mass destruction were not discovered in Iraq.

This year, a record-low number of respondents (31%) expressed a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media — down one point from last year's similarly abysmal figure.

Meanwhile, outright distrust rose from 4% in 1976 to 36% in 2024, briefly cresting at 39% last year.

Slight distrust rose from 22% in 1976 to a high of 41% in 2016. It now sits at 33%.

In the Trump years, trust in the media skyrocketed among Democrats.

Broken down by party affiliation, Gallup indicated that 54% of Democrats, 27% of independents, and 12% of Republican respondents signaled a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media.

Republican trust in the media dropped off around the time of the Watergate scandal and in the lead-up to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. After a brief increase, trust began steadily declining from 1976 onward, enjoying partial though fleeting recoveries at points in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The biggest one-year drop appears to have taken place between 2015 and 2016.

Independents' trust, though historically stronger than that of their Republican counterparts, has — with only a few exceptions — largely degraded in parallel.

Democrats' trust (i.e. "great deal" / "fair amount") tells a different story.

Starting six points higher at first measure in 1972, Democratic trust declined parallel to Republicans' trust from the end of the Vietnam War until 1997 but then began zigzagging erratically during George W. Bush's first term. During the Obama years, trust dropped, reaching an all-time low of 51% in 2016. However, in the Trump years, trust in the media skyrocketed among Democrats, reaching an all-time high of 76% in 2018 — amid the lead-up to the first impeachment of the Republican president.

According to Gallup, Democrats' trust in the media tanked 16 points between 2022 and 2024 to 54%.

Another telling insight from the survey is the generational divide.

Geriatrics' trust in the media currently sits at 43%, having bounced around the high 40s for the past 14 years. Respondents ages 50-64, meanwhile, are less trusting, with only 33% expressing confidence in the media. Only 26% of Americans ages 18-49 expressed a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media.

Possible drivers

This decline has prompted a great deal of speculation in recent years about potential causes.

Some analysts have suggested that the growing distrust in the media is the result of a far greater social crisis. While less an answer and more a prompt for additional question, this is nevertheless borne out by polling data.

Gallup indicated earlier this year that the public's average confidence in 17 institutions, including the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, organized religion, higher education, and banks, has been lower than 30% for the past three years.

As television news and newspapers are among the institutions least trusted, it's clear they are still excelling at shedding public confidence.

Journalist and author Matt Taibbi noted in a recent Canadian state media documentary that trust may have been degraded in part by a change in the media's business model. Taibbi noted that prior to the 1990s, American broadcast news sought to secure the largest possible audience with minimal objectionable content. But facing increased competition, these outlets began targeting specific demographics in the early 2000s.

This, coupled with technological disruptions — AI is now threatening a new shake-up — has allegedly helped to polarize the media landscape.

Owing to the rise of social media and supposed democratization of information, the mainstream media also has faced increasing competition for the public's trust and attention from new sources and platforms.

The Pew Research Center revealed Oct. 16 that young American adults and Republicans are now almost as likely to trust information from social media sources as from national news organizations.

The survey found that among all U.S. adults, 74% of respondents said they had a lot or some trust in local news organizations. 59% said the same of national news organizations. 37% said social media sites had secured their confidence. Whereas the supermajority of Democrats trusted both local and national news organizations, 66% of Republicans supported local outlets and only 40% supported national news organizations — narrowly beating social media sites by three points.

Among adults 18-29, 52% expressed confidence in social media sites, 56% in local news, and 71% in national news organizations.

Blaze News senior editor Cortney Weil noted that extra to providing Americans with alternative information sources, social media platforms such as X have been helpful in illuminating deceptive media practices.

Between Trump and Elon Musk's purchase of perhaps the most powerful social media platform in the world, everyday Americans can see that members of the media all too often launder their preferred narrative through their reporting under the guise of journalism.

Some Americans may have begun nurturing distrust not only after achieving a better understanding of how the proverbial sausage is made but upon discovering who is operating the grinder and where.

There appears to be incredible ideological conformity in the press, where liberals are grossly overrepresented. A 2020 study published in the journal Science Advances indicated that a survey of U.S. political journalists found that among the 78% of respondents who identified with or leaned toward a particular party, eight in 10 said they were liberal/Democrats.

'I have to present myself as someone who is deeply skeptical.'

The problem of real or perceived viewpoint bias is compounded by the de-localization of newsrooms over time to coastal hives amid sweeping consolidation.

"Unless and until media outlets step away from the NYC/D.C./L.A. bubbles and venture out into real America, I don't harbor much hope for them," said Weil.

While these factors might account for Republicans' disproportionate distrust, the lack of intellectual diversity in the press has turned off liberals as well, such as Peabody Award-winning editor Uri Berliner, who complained — just prior to his conveniently timed ouster — that NPR, where he worked for 25 years, had become an "openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience."

Money-poisoned wells and oversaturation

Professor Jacob Nelson at the University of Utah has spent years analyzing trust, objectivity, and bias in reporting. Nelson told Blaze News that in his research, interviewees suggested when asked about their confidence in the media that "the news as a whole is inherently untrustworthy."

"My sense is that that's in large part due to the fact that the media environment has grown so saturated and now comprises so many different providers of news, many of which are antagonistic toward one another and sort of presenting themselves as, 'We are the ones who have the truth, and if you go elsewhere, that is not where you find the truth,'" said Nelson.

"And rather than make people feel as though, 'Okay, I can trust this outlet,' I think that oftentimes people feel, 'Okay, well, if everyone is telling me that everyone is untrustworthy, then I feel like I can't trust anyone, or at the very least, I have to present myself as someone who is deeply skeptical,'" continued Nelson. "'Otherwise, I might be construed as being, you know, like a sucker or someone who is not savvy enough to make sense of what's true or what's false in the world.'"

While reluctant to opine on a possible correlation between the rise of populism and the decline in public trust, Nelson speculated that an anti-elitist verve and sensitivity to patronization might prompt some Americans to discount the supposed expertise of media professionals and harbor distrust.

Nelson suggested that a significant factor affecting trust is the perception that journalism is compromised by commercial interests.

"We did these interviews with people where we asked them, 'Do you trust journalism? Why or why not?'" Nelson told Blaze News. "The question that we kept asking people was, 'Why is it that you think that news organizations are attempting to deceive you? What is their motivation for not giving you the truth, for putting you in a position where you feel like you have to go out of your way to do your own research?'"

"What people often said was that news organizations were doing it for profit-oriented reasons more so than they were doing it for ideological reasons," said Nelson.

Nelson noted that in the case of CNN, which is "perceived as having a left bent," interviewees suggested that the purpose of the anti-Trump coverage was not to "brainwash the public into voting for Democrats" but rather to cater to their liberal audience — possibly as something of a profit-motivated retention and growth strategy.

Nelson ultimately suggested that greater transparency among news outlets about their funding sources as well as a strengthening of local journalism might help arrest and possibly even reverse the downward trend.

While these strategies might alleviate news consumers' concerns about commercial interests, there remains the problem of honesty and accuracy in reporting.

Fake news

The news has virtually always been partisan.

Political parties frequently funded newspapers, particularly in the so-called "party press era," when editors from the 1780s until the mid-19th century would propagandize in favor of their partisan benefactors. Various papers across the country still have their originator's political affiliation in their names.

'He is simply repeating what he has been told.'

And there's always been fake news, although Trump certainly helped make the branding stick.

In "Homage to Catalonia" — a memoir about the Spanish Civil War that Victor Gollancz in the U.K. and prominent elements of the American left ultimately tried to torpedo — George Orwell documented the discrepancy between pro-red Western news accounts of the war and what was actually taking place on the ground.

Orwell, who fought on the side of the republicans and other leftists, highlighted, for instance, that British war correspondent John Langdon-Davies was advancing bogus claims likely fed to him — as had been the case with other foreign journalists — by the minister of propaganda.

"He is simply repeating what he has been told and, as it fits in with the official version, is not questioning it," wrote Orwell.

Orwell was especially sensitive to the Stalinist press' intentional mischaracterization of his allies in the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, who were defamed, then effectively liquidated.

"What was noticeable from the start was that no evidence was produced in support of this accusation [i.e., that they were fascist saboteurs]," wrote Orwell. "The thing was simply asserted with an air of authority. And the attack was made with the maximum of personal libel and with complete irresponsibility as to any effects it might have upon the war."

To the extent that such news was informative, it served primarily to inform Orwell about the competing power narratives of his day.

Many decades later — after the public learned of the CIA's global propaganda network and infiltration of news organizations stateside — the American media dutifully repeated what they were told by the George W. Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as it fit in with the official version.

Susan Moeller, professor of media and international affairs at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, noted that while there were a handful of skeptical journalists,

it was rare for even these reporters to critically probe the political choices that underlay the link between September 11, weapons of mass destruction and Iraq in the "War on Terror." The stultifying patriotic climate not only prompted sympathetic coverage of White House policy, it silenced much of the political opposition that the media could have utilized in order to provide alternative voices and policy options. As a result, most American media did not act to check and balance the exercise of executive power, essential to the functioning of a civil democracy.

Although there have always been fake news and partisan activism in the media, Andie Tucher, a historian and journalist who teaches at Columbia Journalism School, suggested in "Not Exactly Lying" that something changed early in the 20th century when journalists aspired to report the news objectively.

The promise of unadulterated fact and the survival of old reflexes apparently set the stage for new forms of falsehood, including of the Stalinist and WMD varieties — as well as the potential for greater disenchantment among news consumers.

If the American media today were not working under the pretense of sharing the objective truth, then perhaps it wouldn't be as jarring to learn of CBS News' apparent deceptive edit of Kamala Harris' recent interview; to read Jeffrey Goldberg's election-time agitprop in the Atlantic; to learn from Chris Cuomo that it is supposedly illegal to possess copies of WikiLeaks documents; or to watch a CNN reporter standing in front of burning buildings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the BLM riots while the chyron read, "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting."

The collapse of the narratives around the Russian collusion hoax, electoral interference by Russian trolls, ivermectin, the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, masks, and vaccine efficacy similarly might not be as harmful to the public's confidence in the media were news outlets not masquerading as truth-tellers — as hunters and gatherers of the "facts" dedicated to "bring[ing] you the story" in order to edify and protect democracy from dying in darkness.

Here are seven particularly egregious cases of fake or misleading news illustrating what the media might seek to avoid when trying to win back the trust of the American public.

1-3. Armenta, Rittenhouse, and Sandmann

Last year, Carron Phillips penned an article for the sports news website Deadspin accusing a young Kansas City Chiefs fan, Holden Armenta, of wearing "blackface."

"It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once. But on Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, a Kansas City Chiefs fan found a way to hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time," he wrote.

The vicious textual attack, which allegedly resulted in death threats against the Armenta family, evidenced Phillips' willingness to prioritize narrative over facts. After all, a reporter deserving of the public's trust might have acknowledged, for starters, that the boy's face was actually painted red and black — the colors of his favorite team.

With some additional digging, the writer may have also learned that the boy's grandfather was actually on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, California — a hint that the cultural appropriation angle might not have wings.

The family was cleared by a Delaware judge earlier this month to pursue its defamation lawsuit against Deadspin.

Kyle Rittenhouse is another young man traduced by elements of the increasingly distrusted press.

At the age of 17, Rittenhouse shot three radicals who mobbed him during the Aug. 25, 2020, leftist riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He killed two of his attackers — a domestic abuser with multiple convictions and a convicted violent child molester — and disarmed the third, who had advanced on him with a loaded gun.

Rittenhouse was initially charged with homicide, attempted homicide, and reckless endangering but was ultimately acquitted on all counts in November 2021.

Elements of the media, including Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks, repeatedly characterized Rittenhouse as a murderer, while others, including Harper's Bazaar, insinuated that he was somehow a racist, even though all three of his attackers were white. The Nation managed to do both, claiming Rittenhouse got away with murder because of racism.

Former Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann was also unfairly maligned by the press, which appeared keen to ignore visual evidence that would have upset their preferred narrative.

The media painted Sandmann, then 16, as a racist and a bully for allegedly "smirking" while an Indian elder, Nathan Phillips, banged a drum in his face during the 2019 March for Life in Washington, D.C., and while Black Hebrew Israelites hurled insults at him and his classmates.

The New York Times, for instance, falsely reported that Sandmann "prevented Phillips' retreat while Nicholas and a mass of other young white boys surrounded, taunted, jeered and physically intimidated Phillips."

The Washington Post and CNN were among the media outfits that ultimately settled defamation lawsuits with Sandmann.

4. ‘This is MAGA country’

Unlike the three young men just mentioned, the media took an entirely different approach when covering former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett's hate hoax.

In early 2019, Smollett hired two Nigerian-born brothers to place a noose around his neck, rough him up, and shout anti-gay slurs in view of a street camera in Chicago. Smollett said that his attackers yelled, "This is MAGA country!" and later told the press he was targeted because of his criticism of Trump.

Like Kamala Harris, who rushed to label the incident a "modern-day lynching," the media largely accepted the story uncritically, despite the implausibility of key aspects of the actor's story.

Vanity Fair, for instance, suggested in an article titled "Empire's Jussie Smollett Hospitalized After Racist, Homophobic Attack" that the perpetrators were white. The Advocate published a piece titled, "The Attack on Jussie Smollett Is an Attack on All Black Queers."

As Smollett's yarn began to unravel, journalist Sam Sanders admitted to NPR's "Morning Edition" that "in the coverage of this story, some of the basic tenets of journalism, David, were just abandoned. A lot of newsrooms failed to use words like 'alleged' when talking about this story."

Smollett was convicted of five felony counts of disorderly conduct for making a false report to the police.

5. Hunter Biden laptop as Russian 'disinformation'

Ahead of the 2020 election, the New York Post reported on the damning contents of Hunter Biden's laptop and raised various questions about then-candidate Joe Biden, especially about his questionable ties to Ukraine and ties to his son's business dealings.

Elements of the intelligence community antipathetic to President Donald Trump rushed to protect Biden, releasing a public letter on Oct. 19, 2020, asserting that the Hunter Biden laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" intended to hurt the Democrat's candidacy.

Among the cabal of former intelligence officials were reportedly active CIA contractors. One of those contractors, former CIA acting director Michael Morell, later testified to Congress that he organized the letter to "help Vice President Biden" but more specifically, to help "him to win the election."

Politico hurriedly published the letter along with an article titled "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." While acknowledging that the signatories presented no new evidence, Politico attempted to reinforce the strategic narrative with the suggestion by then-National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director Bill Evanina "that Russia has been trying to denigrate Biden's campaign."

Politico also recycled what turned out to be false claims from "top Biden advisers" casting doubt on some of the allegations in the Post's report, namely Biden's ties to his son's business dealings and Burisma.

When covering the letter, the Huffington Post went farther, characterizing the New York Post's legitimate report as a "smear campaign."

Business Insider went farther in its attempts to help the intel officials discredit the Post's report, quoting its then-writer Sonam Sheth, now an editor at the facts-estranged publication Newsweek, who said of the allegations about Biden, "There is no evidence that these claims hold merit, and they've been debunked by intelligence assessments, news reports, congressional investigations, and witness testimony."

6. Israel's jihadist rocket

Ten days after Hamas terrorists massacred thousands of Israelis on October 7, 2023, an explosion took place outside the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. The cause of the blast was ultimately determined to have been an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired.

However, the Associated Press and other media organizations proved willing at the outset to regurgitate terrorist propaganda blaming Israel.

The AP ran with the headline, "Israeli Airstrike Hits Gaza Hospital, Killing 500, Palestinian Health Ministry Says."

The New York Times tweeted, "Breaking News: An Israeli airstrike hit a Gaza hospital on Tuesday, killing at least 200 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which said the number of casualties was expected to rise."

CNN ran a headline presuming Israeli involvement, which read, "Palestinian health ministry says 200 to 300 people may have been killed in Israeli strike on hospital in Gaza."

Confronted with the reality of the situation and significant backlash, these and other publications ultimately walked back their misleading reports.

The Times, for instance, admitted days later that that "the early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was."

7. 'Very fine people'

Establishment news outlets provided Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and other Democrats with a useful but false account of Trump's remarks regarding the August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where among the protesters and counterprotesters were leftists, individuals critical of the removal of a Confederate statue, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists.

The media desperately tried to suggest that Trump referred to white supremacists and possibly even Nazis as "very fine people."

The Atlantic ran an article titled "Trump Defends White-Nationalist Protesters: 'Some Very Fine People on Both Sides.'"

Former Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan also suggested that Trump treated "white supremacists and those who protest them as roughly equal."

ABC News reported, "Trump quickly blamed both sides for the conflict, adding that there were 'very fine people' among both the protesters — which included white supremacists and white nationalists — and the counterprotesters."

The AP reported, "President Donald Trump declared anew Tuesday 'there is blame on both sides' for the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, appearing to once again equate the actions of white supremacist groups and those protesting them."

These efforts forced Snopes to ultimately admit — to the chagrin of leftists at the New Republic — that Trump had done no such thing.

Days after the "Unite the Right" rally, President Trump held a press conference, where a reporter asked him about the neo-Nazis at the demonstration. Trump said, "As I said on, remember this, Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America."

After Trump noted that violent instigators were on both sides of the demonstration and that some people present at the rally had simply been protesting iconoclasm, a reporter said, "The neo-Nazis started this thing. They showed up in Charlottesville."

Trump replied:

Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

Snopes underscored that "he wasn't talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be 'condemned totally.'"

"For every instance of hard-nosed journalism, the media engage in ten instances of partisan tomfoolery," Cortney Weil told Blaze News. "I'd say, 'Stop lying,' but that doesn't really get to the heart of the problem. Even Satan can cite scripture accurately when doing so suits his purposes."

Weil stressed that "until they prove otherwise, members of the media as a whole remain a snake in the grass."

Blaze News reached out for comment to editors of the Washington Post, NPR, Salon, and CNN but did not receive responses by deadline.

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