A new YouGov survey finds that Americans’ trust in the media to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly is low: Only 29% say they have a fair amount or a great deal of trust. More (44%) have at least a fair amount of trust in Donald Trump’s administration to state facts fully, accurately and fairly.
The survey also found that Americans are more likely to see the media’s coverage of Trump as too negative than to see it as too positive. Around four in 10 believe the media wants Trump to fail.
Trust in the media is low among Americans. 26% have no trust and confidence at all in the media to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they have no trust and confidence in the media at all (35% vs. 13%). 41% of Americans say they don’t have very much trust or confidence in the media to do this, 24% have a fair amount and only 4% have a great deal — down from 11% who said they had a great deal of trust and confidence in the media in a YouGov survey from January 2017. The drop among Democrats is to 8% from 23%.
Around half of Americans also don’t have much trust in the Trump administration to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly. 38% of Americans say they have no trust and confidence in the administration to do so, an increase from 2017 when 31% of Americans said this. 13% say they don’t have very much trust and confidence, 19% have a fair amount, and 25% have a great deal, up from 18% in 2017. Only 5% of Democrats have a great deal of trust and confidence in the administration to share facts fully, accurately, and fairly. 52% of Republicans do, up from 38% in 2017.
Only 25% of Americans think the tone of media coverage of Trump has been about right. They are more likely to say media coverage of Trump has been too negative (35%) than to say it’s been too positive (23%, up from 14% in 2017).
42% of Democrats and 6% of Republicans think media coverage of Trump has been too positive. 12% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans think coverage has been too negative.