After years of press briefings, rallies, debates, campaign events and presidential speeches where journalists were excoriated, called liars and peddlers of 'fake news,' a not-so-surprising result has emerged.
Americans don't trust the media.
Pollsters at Gallup released a survey that found Americans' trust in the media to report the news 'fully, accurately and fairly' has edged down 4% since last year to 36%, making this year's result the second lowest ever recorded in Gallup's history. They started these polls in 1972.
In all, a meager 7% of U.S. adults said they have "a great deal" of confidence and 29% "a fair amount" of trust in newspapers, television and radio news reporting. Combined that's four points above the 32% record low in 2016, which came amid the divisive presidential election campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
In addition, 29% of the public currently registers "not very much" trust and 34% have "none at all."
The results are skewed by political party affiliation. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats, 11% of Republicans and 31% of independents say they trust the media a 'great deal or fair amount.' That means there's a striking 57-point gap in confidence between Republicans and Democrats.
"Historically, Republicans' confidence in the accuracy and fairness of the news media's reporting has not risen above 52% over the past quarter century. At the same time, Democrats' confidence has not fallen below the 2016 reading of 51%," the survey experts at Gallup found.
Pollsters at fivethirtyeight found that starting in 2015, trust among Republicans for the media "took a nosedive," falling from 32 percent then to 10 percent by 2020.
Why is that?
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Meredith Conroy at fivethirtyeight wrote, "Part of this is because Republicans are often more vocal in their criticism of the media and have long perceived it as having a liberal bias. But now they are also more likely to say that being “anti-media” is part of their political identity, and this is likely driving the staggering gap in media trust that we are seeing."