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Americans' Trust in Media Remains at Second Lowest on Record (Gallup, 2023)
webCredibility Rating
4/5
High(4)High quality. Established institution or organization with editorial oversight and accountability.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Gallup
Relevant background for AI safety discussions about epistemic ecosystems, the challenge of communicating AI risks to a polarized public, and how low institutional trust complicates governance and public understanding of emerging technologies.
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Importance: 38/100news articlereference
Summary
This Gallup poll reports that American trust in mass media has fallen to the second lowest level ever recorded, with only 32% of Americans saying they trust the media. The data reveals a deepening partisan divide, with Republicans showing historically low trust and independents declining as well. This trend has significant implications for public epistemics and the spread of misinformation.
Key Points
- •Only 32% of Americans say they have 'a great deal' or 'a fair amount' of trust in mass media, second lowest since Gallup began tracking in 1972.
- •Sharp partisan divide: only 11% of Republicans trust media, compared to 58% of Democrats and 29% of independents.
- •Declining media trust compounds challenges around public epistemics, making it harder to establish shared factual baselines.
- •Low institutional trust in media may increase vulnerability to misinformation, AI-generated content, and epistemic manipulation.
- •Trend has worsened progressively since 2016, suggesting structural rather than cyclical erosion of trust.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Epistemic Learned Helplessness | Risk | 53.0 |
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Historically Low Faith in U.S. Institutions Continues
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Historically Low Faith in U.S. Institutions Continues
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Story Highlights
No institution’s confidence score improved significantly in the past year
Confidence in four institutions now at record lows
Widest party gaps seen for the presidency, public schools
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans’ faith in major societal institutions hasn’t improved over the past year following a slump in public confidence in 2022.
Last year, Gallup recorded significant declines in public confidence in 11 of the 16 institutions it tracks annually, with the presidency and Supreme Court suffering the most. The share of Americans expressing a great deal or fair amount of confidence in these fell 15 and 11 percentage points, respectively.
Neither score recovered appreciably in the latest poll, with confidence in the court now at 27% and the presidency at 26%. However, the survey was conducted June 1-22, 2023, before the Supreme Court issued decisions affecting affirmative action in education, college loan forgiveness and LGBTQ+ Americans’ access to creative services. Any or all of these decisions could have altered the court’s image as well as that of President Joe Biden, who spoke out against the rulings.
Public confidence in each of the other 14 institutions remains near last year’s relatively low level, with none of the scores worsening or improving meaningfully.
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Overall, the new poll finds small business enjoying the most public trust, with 65% of Americans having a great deal or fair amount of confidence in it. A majority, 60%, also have high confidence in the military, while less than half (43%) feel this way about the next highest-rated institution, the police.
The medical system and the church or organized religion round out the top five annually rated institutions, albeit with meager 34% and 32% confidence ratings, respectively. Another six -- the U.S. Supreme Court, banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies and organized labor -- earn between 25% and 27% confidence.
The five worst-rated institutions -- newspapers, the criminal justice system, television news, big business and Congress -- stir confidence in less than 20% of Americans, with Congress, at 8%, the only one in single digits.
Gallup also included higher education on the list of institutions rated this year. Analysis of the resu
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