Americans’ confidence in the mainstream media has hit an all-time low, with fewer than three in 10 saying they trust newspapers, television, and radio to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly,” according to a new Gallup survey released Oct. 2.
The poll, conducted Sept. 2-16, found just 28% of U.S. adults express a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media — down from 31% in 2024 and 40% in 2020. The only other time confidence dipped near this level was in 2016, when it hit 32%.
Meanwhile, 70% now say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%).
Republicans remain the most skeptical, with just 8% expressing trust, marking the first time the number has fallen into single digits since Gallup began tracking the question in the 1970s. However, Gallup noted Republicans’ confidence hasn’t risen above 21% since 2015.
Independents, whose trust hasn’t reached the majority level since 2003, fare little better at 27%. Even Democrats — historically the group most supportive of the press — have slipped to 51%, tying their lowest level in 2016.
Gallup also reported a sharp generational divide. From 2023 to 2025, an average 43% of adults 65 and older expressed confidence in the media, compared with no more than 28% in any younger age group. In the early 2000s, trust levels across all ages were similar, hovering just above 50%.
Confidence in the press once stood between 68% and 72% in the 1970s, according to Gallup’s polling, but has steadily eroded over the decades, falling below a majority in 2004 and never recovering. The most recent noticeable uptick came in 2018, when trust briefly rose to 45%.
The findings are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,000 adults, ages 18 and older, from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The results carry a margin of sampling error of ±4 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
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