Politics

The Least and Most Trusted News Sources in America

Published

6 years ago

August 2, 2017

Jeff Desjardins

Which news sources are the most trustworthy?

This seems like a simple question – but in the “fake news” era, things haven’t been so straightforward. As a result, the public’s level of trust in mass media has fallen to a low of just 32%.

Examining The Trust Spectrum

A new survey by the Trusting News Project helps shed more light on the state of trust in media, revealing the attitudes of 8,728 people in the United States. Administered through 28 media outlets around the country, the survey asked respondents how trusting they are of the media, whether they financially support news organizations, and which outlets are the most (and least) trustworthy.

Here are results to the question about trustworthiness of specific news sources:

The Least and Most Trusted News Sources in America

Before we dive into the results, it’s worth noting that respondents were self-selected and tend to skew to the liberal side of the political spectrum. More on this later in the post, but keep it in mind.

High Trust, Low Trust

According to the survey respondents, The Economist is the most trustworthy news source in media.

On the far opposite side of the spectrum? It’s Occupy Democrats, an extreme left advocacy group that claims to be the “new counterbalance to the Republican Tea Party”.

Interestingly, both The Economist and Occupy Democrats have close to the same amount of Facebook likes (8.2 million vs. 6.7 million), which shows that despite polar opposite perceptions, people are willing to grant an audience to both groups.

Also scoring well for trust included outlets such as Reuters, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, and The Guardian. Meanwhile, bad trust scores went to Buzzfeed, Breitbart, Infowars, Yahoo, and The Huffington Post.

Trust By Political Skew

It’s also worth breaking down respondents into groups based on political orientation, to see what differences this can point out regarding trust and the level of financial support being provided to news organizations.

On the following graph, the X-axis shows age groups, while the Y-axis shows levels of trust (higher is more), as well as the number of news organizations respondents claim to financially support (higher is more).

Trustworthiness of the media

For people that identify as liberals or moderates, trust of news outlets is positively correlated with age. Interestingly, for conservatives, trust in media starts low and seems to decrease with age.

Audience Biases

As mentioned earlier, although the sample size was big (>8,000), there are a few biases worth noting:

Survey respondents were not randomly selected, and voluntarily filled out the survey.
Survey respondents tended to be geographically near the 28 newsrooms, many of which were local, that made the survey available on their websites.
In terms of political orientation, the audience skews towards liberals. (See below diagram).

Political orientations

And while the audience may not be fully representative of the American public, the survey definitely does provide interesting insight on trust in media. Get access to the full report by clicking here.

Politics

Which Countries are the Most Polarized?

This chart plots polarization for various countries based on the Edelman Trust Institute’s annual survey of 32,000+ people.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 18, 2023

Pallavi Rao

Which Countries are the Most Polarized?

How do you measure something that’s made headlines for half a decade but is still difficult to quantify? We’re talking about polarization.

Even within the social sciences, polarization covers everything from racial segregation, to labor skill levels, to class divide, to political ideology.

How Do You Quantify Polarization?

Edelman’s data on which countries are the most polarized comes from survey results asking respondents two very simple questions:

How divided is their country?
How entrenched is the divide?

The questions help bring to light the social issues a particular country is facing and the lack of consensus on those issues.

Plotted against each other, a chart emerges. A country in the top–right corner of the chart is “severely polarized.” Countries located closer to the lower–left are considered less polarized.

In the report, Edelman identifies four metrics to watch for and measure which help quantify polarization.

Economic Anxieties	Will my family be better off in five years?
Institutional Imbalance	Government is viewed as unethical and incompetent.
Class Divide	People with higher incomes have a higher trust in institutions.
Battle for Truth	Echo chambers, and a low trust in media.

Following Edelman’s metrics, countries with economic uncertainty and inequality as well as institutional distrust are more likely to be polarized. Below, we look at key highlights from the chart.

Severely Polarized Countries

Despite being one of the largest economies in Latin America, Argentina is the most polarized country surveyed by a large margin. Foreign loan defaults, a high fiscal deficit, and now surging inflation have created a perfect storm in the country.

43% of the Argentinian respondents said they will be better off in five years, down 17 percentage points from last year.

Along with fiscal upheaval, Argentinians are also dealing with enduring corruption in the public sector and abrupt policy reversals between governments. Only 20% of those surveyed in Argentina said they trusted the government—the least of all surveyed countries.

Here are all six of the countries considered to be severely polarized:

In the U.S., heightened political upheaval between Democrats and Republicans over the last few years has led to strengthening ideological stances and to an abundance of headlines about polarization. Only 42% of respondents in the country trust the government.

And in South Africa, persistent inequality and falling trust in the African National Congress also check off Edelman’s metrics. It’s also second after Argentina with the least trust in government (22%) per the survey.

Moderately Polarized Countries

The biggest cluster of 15 countries are in moderately polarized section of the chart, with all continents represented.

Some are on the cusp of being severely polarized, including economic heavyweights like Japan, the UK, France, and Germany. On the other hand, smaller economies like Thailand, Kenya, and Nigeria, are doing comparatively better on the polarization chart.

Less Polarized Countries

Countries with fair economic outlook and high trust in institutions including China, Singapore, and India are in the bottom left sector of the chart.

It’s interesting to note that of the seven countries in that sector, three are not democracies. That said, there are also more developing countries on this list as well, which could also be a factor.

Looking Ahead

Edelman notes that polarization is both “cause and consequence of distrust,” creating a self-fulfilling cycle. Aside from the four metrics stated above, concerns about the erosion of civility and weakening social fabric also lead to polarization.

Edelman polarization quote

As global events unfold in 2023—including looming worries of a recession—it will be fascinating to see how countries might switch positions in the year to come.

Where does this data come from?

Source: The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer

Data note: Survey conducted: Nov 1 – Nov 28, 2022. Survey included 32,000+ respondents in 28 countries. Russia was omitted from this year’s survey. See page 2 of the report for more details.