By Manzanita Miller
In a catastrophic blow to an already crumbling industry, a new poll released this week finds that more Americans trust the Trump Administration to state the facts fairly and accurately than trust the media to do so.
The poll, released by YouGov, finds that just 29 percent of Americans say they have a fair amount or a great deal of trust in the media to state the facts “fully, accurately, and fairly”, while 44 percent say they have at least a fair amount of trust in President Donald Trump’s Administration to state the facts fully, accurately and fairly.
Think about that – less than a third of Americans think the press is capable of doing the only job it has, and Americans say by fifteen points the Trump Administration is doing a better job of informing the public accurately.
This comes at a time when the press has declared all out war on the Trump Administration, and Trump is fighting back. After suffering eight years’ worth of relentless attacks on his every move and a media machine fixated on propping up his globalist opponents, President Trump is holding the purposefully deceitful media accountable.
After a series of politically-charged journalist “recommendations” from its widely used AP Stylebook began to circulate, the Associated Press (AP) was met with pushback from the Trump Administration. Trump’s team banned the outlet from certain White House access after the AP refused to use the term “Gulf of America”.
The Associated Press pushes a left-wing worldview, urging journalists through its Stylebook to do away with the term “illegal immigrants”, stressing the use of the term “gender affirming care” for transgender surgeries, and urging journalists to capitalize the word “Black” but not “white” when referring to racial groups.
The AP is suing the Trump Administration in response to the White House ban, but so far, the law has been on Trump’s side. A federal judge on Monday declined to order the Trump Administration to immediately restore access for the embittered news outlet.
Trump is locked in a legal battle with CBS News after asserting the network’s “60 Minutes” segment, which aired during the election season last year, violated the Texas consumer fraud statute by using a heavily-edited Kamala Harris statement about the war in Gaza.
In a successful lawsuit against ABC News, ABC was forced to shell out $16 million to President Trump after he filed a defamation suit over an ABC news anchor inaccurately declaring a jury’s verdict in the E. Jean Carroll case.
Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is also launching an investigation into Comcast, over its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) agenda, after President Trump signed an executive order ending DEI and declaring such initiatives violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
For their part, the American People largely share Trump’s skepticism and outright mistrust of the mainstream media, with poll after poll showing how far public trust in media has fallen.
The press dug their own graves when they abandoned actual reporting and became activists for a radical left-wing agenda most Americans oppose.
A mere four percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in the media to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly, according to YouGov data. This is down from an already dangerous 11 percent who said they had a great deal of trust in the media during Trump’s first term.
While partisanship is a factor with more Republicans than Democrats mistrusting the mainstream media, trust has eroded on the left as well. In 2017, 23 percent of Democrats said they had a great deal of trust in the media to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly, but that has fallen to only 8 percent.
A YouGov poll released earlier this month shows Americans say by an alarming 27 points – 43 percent to 16 percent – that the mainstream media wants to see President Trump fail in leading the country. Fifteen percent of Democrats, 40 percent of independents and 73 percent of Republicans firmly believe the media has a direct interest in seeing President Trump fail.
Another YouGov poll released in December found a mere eight percent of Americans strongly agree the media “generally acts in the best interests of Americans”. The poll also showed Americans say by 23 points – 58 percent to 35 percent – the media does not generally act in the best interests of Americans.
This was not always true. According to Gallup’s tracker of public trust in the media going back to the 1970’s, public trust has eroded decade by decade.
In 1976, 76 percent of Americans had a good or fair amount of trust in the media, but that was down to just 31 percent in 2024, the lowest number on record for Gallup. The second lowest number on record was 32 percent – right after Trump won the 2016 election and the press launched its all-out war against him.
The time for treating activist journalists and media outlets as if they are anything less is over. Members of the press need to make up their minds whether they are objective journalists or activists for the radical left, and if it is the latter they can expect public trust in their coverage to continue to erode.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
