American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy

"News organizations need to do a better job engaging their readers and explaining to them how they report stories and the care they put into getting it right." - Tim Franklin, Senior Associate Dean at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University

Results of this 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey show that, while technological advances have made it easier for Americans to connect with each other and to find information, including details about the major issues facing the country, those advances present both challenges and opportunities for individuals and United States (US) institutions. While people continue to give low marks to traditional news media sources when it comes to objectivity and trust, they are also souring on the big tech platforms. The research reported here is based on a nationally representative mail survey of more than 19,000 US adults aged 18 and older. This project received support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Open Society Foundations.

Here are a few notable findings:

• While 84% of those polled say that the media has an important role to pay in democracy, such as making sure Americans have the knowledge they need to be informed about public affairs and holding leaders accountable for their actions, just 33% have a "very favourable" or "somewhat favourable" opinion of the news media. The public divides evenly on the question of who is primarily responsible for ensuring people have an accurate and politically balanced understanding of the news: 48% say the news media and 48% say individuals themselves.
• Americans with favourable views towards the news media were more likely to agree with the idea that more information makes it easier to stay informed, as opposed to harder. Still, 58% of Americans said that the proliferation of news sources makes it harder to stay informed. Just half say that there are enough news sources to help them cut through bias, down from 66% a generation ago. Only 27% of those polled said they, personally, are "very confident" that they can tell when a news source is reporting factual news versus commentary or opinion.
• Political polarisation is behind a lot of the divergence in Americans views on news media. While 54% of Democrats hold a favourable view of the news media, only 15% of Republicans do. Compared to Democrats, Republicans were also significantly more likely to identify reporting bias, sensationalism, and ideology as major problem with news media today. Forty-five percent of those polled agreed that there is "a great deal" of political bias in news coverage, which is a significant increase from 1989, where only 25% said the same. In a similar vein, less than half of Americans said they could name an objective news source.
• On a multiple-item media trust scale with scores ranging from a low of zero to a high of 100, the average American scores a 37. Older Americans tend to view the media more positively than younger adults do.
• Roughly two-thirds of US adults say they rely on television news "a great deal" or "a fair amount" for staying up-to-date on news. (Internet news websites are the next-most-common source.) Americans have the greatest trust in national network news and local and national newspapers to provide mostly accurate and politically balanced news. They trust cable news more than they trust internet news sources. Younger adults (aged under 50) are more likely to consume news online, including on social media, while older adults are much more likely to watch or listen to news. Reliance on newspapers is most common among adults with graduate degrees, as well as those who are aged 65 and older.
• Fifty-one percent of women, compared with 33% of men, say they rely a great deal or a fair amount on news links on social media sites to stay informed.
• A majority of blacks, 55%, rely on TV or radio talk shows to stay up to date, compared with 42% of Hispanics, 40% of whites, and 34% of Asians.
• Americans commonly share news stories with others - primarily with like-minded people.
• Majorities say the effect of citizen videos, the internet, cable news, and news aggregators has been positive for the news environment, while a majority say the impact of social media - and politicians' use of it to communicate directly to citizens - has been negative. Seventy-three percent of Americans say the spread of inaccurate information on the internet is a major problem with news coverage today; this percentage is higher than for any other potential type of news bias.
• Just 42% said Facebook and Twitter have had a positive impact on the news media environment over the past 10 years. Americans are particularly concerned about the platform's filter bubble problem (when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user, such as location, past click-behaviour, and search history): 57% of Americans said that algorithmic story selection represents "a major problem" for US democracy. Americans are, however, split on what to do about the problem: 49% say that there should be rules or regulations that govern the methods platforms use to provide users with news content, while 47% say there should not.