Mainstream media approval among Americans across party lines has sunk to a record low, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
The poll of 1,000 U.S. adults, taken Sept. 2-16, found that just 28% expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, TV, and radio to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.
This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago — the first time trust has dropped below 30% in the poll’s history. The poll had a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.
Meanwhile, 70% of respondents said they either have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%) in the media.
Republicans’ confidence, which hasn’t risen above 21% since 2015, fell into single digits (8%) for the first time. Independents’ trust was at 27%, equaling last year’s record low.
Among Democrats, 51% expressed trust in the media, tying a record low set in 2016.
“When Gallup began measuring trust in the news media in the 1970s, between 68% and 72% of Americans expressed confidence in reporting,” Megan Brenan, a senior editor at Gallup, wrote in a summary of the poll. “However, by the next reading in 1997, public confidence had fallen to 53%.
“Media trust remained just above 50% until it dropped to 44% in 2004, and it has not returned to a majority level since. The highest reading in the past decade was 45% in 2018, which came just two years after confidence had collapsed amid the divisive 2016 presidential campaign.”
There is also a generational divide in media trust, Brenan wrote. In the most recent analysis of aggregated data from 2023 to 2025, 43% of adults aged 65 and older expressed confidence in the media, compared with no more than 28% in any of the three other younger age groups.
In the early 2000s, Americans in all age groups expressed relatively similar levels of confidence in the media — just above 50%. Since then, confidence among all groups has gradually declined, though the drop has been less steep among those 65 and older.
“Confidence in the mass media is historically low, with fewer than 3 in 10 Americans now placing trust in newspapers, television, and radio to report the news fully, fairly, and accurately,” Brenan wrote.
“The decline is evident across all major partisan groups, though Republicans’ confidence is now in the single digits, while independents remain largely skeptical. Democrats, who traditionally have been most positive toward the media, now register only a slim majority.
“With confidence fractured along partisan and generational lines, the challenge for news organizations is not only to deliver fair and accurate reporting but also to regain credibility across an increasingly polarized and skeptical public,” she wrote.
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