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The annual Trust in Media survey from polling outfit YouGov is out, and it shows vast differences in where Democrats and Republicans trust to get information from.

 

The divide between Democrats and Republicans on which news sources are trustworthy remains stark.

Last year, The Economist / YouGov published the results of a poll asking Americans where they get their news from and how much they trusted 22 prominent media organizations. YouGov revisited the topic this year by asking Americans to share how much trust they place in even more broadcast, digital, print, and social media outlets: 56 in total.

In this year's trust in media poll — conducted from April 3 - 9, 2023 — YouGov asked Americans to say whether they trust, distrust, or neither trust nor distrust the media organizations. From the results, it is possible to determine each outlet's net trust score – that is, how much more likely Americans are to say the outlet is trustworthy or very trustworthy than untrustworthy or very untrustworthy.

Even with the additions to the group of outlets polled about, The Weather Channel remains the most trusted news source among Americans overall. Americans are 53 points more likely to call The Weather Channel trustworthy as they are to call it untrustworthy. It's also the only outlet that YouGov asked about that more Democrats (+64) and Republicans (+47) trust than the shares who distrust it. The Weather Channel is just one of two outlets polled about that a majority of Republicans trust; the other one is Fox News (56% of Republicans trust it, with a net trust score among them of +41).

When it comes to the national rankings, The Weather Channel is followed by national public broadcaster PBS (+30), the U.K. news outlet BBC (+29), and The Wall Street Journal (+24) in national trust. This year's poll has the same group in the top four as last year's poll — even with the additions to this year's poll.

There also are more people who trust than distrust Forbes (+23), the Associated Press (+22), ABC (+21), USA Today (+21), CBS (+20), and Reuters (+20). Only a handful of outlets from the list are viewed by more Americans as untrustworthy than the share who view it as trustworthy: Infowars (-16), the Daily Caller (-4), Breitbart News (-3), and Daily Kos (-1).

In this poll, the three broadcast networks had similar levels of trust, while there was a slightly lower level of trust in each of the three cable networks: 44% say they trust ABC, 43% trust CBS, 42% trust NBC, 40% trust CNN, 38% trust Fox News, and 36% trust MSNBC.

 

Observations:

 

• This is already out of date I'd think, before Fox News fired Tucker Carlson. I'd dare say Republican trust in Fox is significantly lower today than it was a month ago.
• Everyone loves the Weather Channel, nobody trusts Infowars.
• Republicans trust a handful of outlets, and with Fox News increasingly out of the picture, expect to see that number shrink, not grow.
• Democrats trust several right-wing news sites more than Republicans do, namely National Review, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, and two Murdoch papers, Wall Street Journal and the NY Post. This also includes Village insider baseball politics sites like Politico, Axios, The Hill, and Business Insider.
• More Dems trust Fox News than Republicans trust ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, or MSNBC if you're still wondering about the massive lurch to the right in those networks in the last year.

 

The media has a long way to go to stop being broken, but the bigger issue is they keep chasing Republicans who will never like them, and Democrats who actually believe the bad actors.