Americans Have the Lowest Trust in News in the World

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Liberal Patriot

Only around one quarter of Americans trust the news most of the time, and more than 4 in 10 limit their news consumption or avoid it altogether.

 

People are aware of America’s infamous political polarization and the seepage of strange partisan and ideological outlooks into every aspect of modern life. Perhaps less well understood, the increase in seemingly irresolvable partisan conflicts also coincides with a total collapse in public trust of objective news reporting among most Americans and a steep increase in the number of Americans checking out from national news altogether.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and YouGov released a fascinating study last year examining news consumption and media habits across the world based on interviews with 93,000 people in 46 markets on 6 continents. This impressive study provides a wealth of comparative data across different national contexts and political environments.

Two findings from the 2000+ sample of citizens in the United States really stand out:

Only 26 percent of Americans express general trust in the news—tied for the lowest level of trust in the world along with the citizens of Slovakia. The survey asked respondents whether they agree or disagree with the following statement: “I think you can trust most news most of the time.” As the report authors note (and as seen in the charts below):

Trust in the news has fallen in almost half the countries in our survey, and risen in just seven, partly reversing the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, around four in ten of our total sample (42 percent) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69 percent), while news trust in the USA has fallen by a further three percentage points and remains the lowest (26 percent) in our survey.

Likewise, Americans’ trust in the news that people use themselves, rather than more generally, only hits 41 percent—not exactly a ringing endorsement.

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House Weaponization Committee To Focus On The ‘Twitter Files’ In Second Hearing

The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government plans to shine a spotlight on the FBI misconduct revealed in the “Twitter Files” at the panel’s second hearing, scheduled for next week.

On March 9, lawmakers participating in the bipartisan probe will hear from a pair of writers who were the primary journalists given access to Twitter’s internal records by the company’s new CEO Elon Musk. Substack reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger will testify at the daytime hearing.

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