Trust in the American media has increased since President Donald Trump made his return to the Oval Office, according to a new study.
Business intelligence firm Caliber found that the number of Americans who consider newspapers the institution they trust the most to tell the truth has grown to 17 percent in May from 14 percent in August, while the figure for television news has similarly risen to 16 percent from 12 percent.
Over the same period, this barometer of trust in the White House has remained flat at 10 percent, though it is down from 11 percent in December.
Why It Matters
While still at low levels, the growing public trust in the media coincides with Trump’s return to the White House and a revival of the adversarial relationship between the two. As during his first stint in the White House – marked by repeated verbal attacks on the “fake news” media – President Trump’s second term has featured similar spats with media institutions and practices.
What To Know
Caliber’s most recent survey took place from April 30 to May 11, and involved 1,126 respondents. The surveys for August and December involved 1,367 and 1,278 respondents, respectively.
According to Caliber’s results, trust in the media has grown among both Republicans and Democrats, though more significantly in the latter group. Faith in newspapers and television news among Republicans has grown from 8 percent and 11 percent, respectively, to 10 percent and 16 percent between August and May. Among Democrats, the figures have edged up to 25 percent from 24 percent, and to 21 percent from 19 percent.
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Pew Research similarly found that Republicans’ trust in national news media had grown since Trump’s return to the White House. According to their March poll, over half (53 percent) of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now have some trust in national news organizations, up from 40 percent in September.
However, Americans remain widely skeptical of the news media. A Gallup poll conducted before the November elections found that the percentage of those who have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media reporting news fairly and accurately had dropped to 31 percent, down from 45 percent in 2018. This figure had stood as high as 72 percent in 1976.
Meanwhile, according to Caliber, trust in the White House has increased by 10 percentage points among Republicans since August, from 7 to 17 percent, while halving to 8 percent from 16 percent among Democrats.
What People Are Saying
Matthew Baum, Professor of Global Communications and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, told Newsweek: “As the media has turned from criticizing a Democratic president to criticizing a Republican president, Democrats, and increasingly also Independents, among whom favorability toward the Trump Administration is quite low, increase their trust in the media. This is more or less what happened during the first Trump administration.”
What Happens Next?
Baum added that trust in the media among Democrats and Independents could be affected by the extent to which institutions are viewed as “capitulating to Trump administration pressure.”