Public’s distrust for media grows: Why?

A Gallup survey conducted this month found a jaw-dropping 60 percent of the American public surveyed “have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.”

This lack of trust in traditional mass media, such as newspapers, radio, and TV, is up from the past few years, and up a full 5 percentage points from last year.

“The current gap between negative and positive views—20 percentage points—is by far the highest Gallup has recorded since it began regularly asking the question in the 1990s,” wrote Gallup’s Lymari Morales.

Some of the findings include:

• Trust in the media was much higher, and more positive than negative, in the years prior to 2004—as high as 72 percent when Gallup asked this question three times in the 1970s.

• Republicans continue to express the least trust in the media, while Democrats express the most. Independents’ trust fell below the majority level in 2004 and has continued to steadily decline.