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<i>Tom Rosenstiel is the Eleanor Merrill scholar on the future of journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and a senior fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago. Mariana Meza Hernandez is a member of the Public Affairs &amp; Media Research department at NORC.</i>

As the nation hurtles toward a critical election and the world confronts two wars, the fate of U.S. democracy is complicated by another pressure: the public’s low esteem of the media. Trust in the news is at record lows, especially among conservatives, and local news is at risk of dying out completely.

Isn’t that the case, repeated in poll after poll and bemoaned by pundits? That sad state hangs over everything, because democracy depends on an agreed-upon set of facts, a free press to discover them and a public square where citizens can find compromise over their differences.

But if you look more closely, the reality isn’t so simple — or so dire. There is far more trust in journalism these days than people often contend.

Nevertheless, that exaggerated narrative of media disaster is becoming a problem in itself. It gets in the way of news organizations taking steps to make matters better, and it feeds an anti-press narrative easily exploited by manipulative politicians. If journalism is going to rebuild its business model and its connection to the public, we need to understand more clearly what people think of it and what they need from it.

Yes, there are signs of crisis. By Gallup’s count, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx" target=_blank>only 34 percent of Americans</a> have even a “fair amount” of trust and confidence that the media reports the news “fully, accurately and fairly.”

But ask the same question with only a slight variation, and the results look quite different. At the research firm NORC at the University of Chicago, we give people five possible answers to the question — a so-called five-point scale, rather than the four-point scale Gallup uses. By this method, more than half of Americans — 55 percent — <a href="https://apnorc.org/projects/assessing-the-news-media-trust-coverage-and-threats-to-a-free-press/" target="_blank">trust the press’s accuracy</a>. The Pew Research Center asks the question differently still and finds that <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/27/u-s-adults-under-30-now-trust-information-from-social-media-almost-as-much-as-from-national-news-outlets/" target="_blank">61 percent have “a lot” or “some” trust</a> in the information they get from national news organizations.

As for the assertion that conservatives are more skeptical of the media, that’s not so cut-and-dried, either. When asked their feelings about local news, rather than national, conservatives and liberals look quite similar. In a NORC survey conducted this spring, a third of conservatives (32 percent) <a href="https://apnorc.org/projects/assessing-the-news-media-trust-coverage-and-threats-to-a-free-press/" target="_blank">said the media does “very or extremely well”</a> — the highest possible rating — covering local issues they care about, and close to half (46 percent) gave the middle grade of “somewhat well.” To any survey researcher, those are positive ratings. And the numbers for liberals were almost identical.

Conservatives, liberals and moderates also say they want the same things from the news. Fully 80 percent of liberals, 56 percent of conservatives and 64 percent of moderates told NORC they find news stories that report the facts of an issue “extremely or very” helpful.

Even the critique of what’s wrong with the press isn’t drastically different across ideologies. Most people, regardless of their political leanings, think news stories are more likely to foment conflict than help address it. Most also think the media is far too inclined to pass along conspiracy theories and rumors. Conservatives are more inclined to worry about a polarizing press, and liberals are more concerned about it being a rumormongering one, but the differences aren’t great.

There is even ample evidence that Americans still share a public square where they can find common facts — at least at the local level. Fifty-two percent told NORC that the sources they rely on for news are local TV news stations, apps, websites or news alerts. An additional 24 percent cited local newspaper content (in print, digital, apps or news alerts). Those findings are reinforced by <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/27/u-s-adults-under-30-now-trust-information-from-social-media-almost-as-much-as-from-national-news-outlets/" target=_blank>Pew data</a>, which finds majorities of both conservatives and liberals trusting the accuracy of the information they get from local news outlets (63 percent for Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents, 79 percent for Democrats and leaners).

Another set of dire assumptions involves millennials and Gen Z. If the news industry is shifting from advertising to subscriptions, doesn’t that spell another crisis for the press? Young people accustomed to getting everything free online, particularly through social platforms, won’t pay for news, will they? Again the data might surprise you. The Media Insight Project (a collaboration involving NORC) found that 60 percent of people younger than 40 <a href="https://apnorc.org/projects/funding-news-how-gen-z-and-millennials-pay-for-or-donate-to-news/" target="_blank">already pay for or donate to news in some way</a>.

None of this implies that a crisis of trust in the news is an illusion. NORC’s <a href="https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/home" target=_blank>General Social Survey</a>, which measures trust in institutions, finds that the news media and Congress share the lowest levels of confidence of any institutions in the country —  below 10 percent report “a great deal” of confidence in either.

The point is that we should be wary of generalizations and monolithic assumptions when thinking about how to rebuild the infrastructure for a responsible press and about how that press should operate. There’s a lot we still don’t know. Journalism is in crisis, but until we learn more about the precise nature of the problem, we can’t take the right steps to fix it — and give our democracy the informational foundation it needs to thrive.

Tom Rosenstiel

Mariana Meza Hernandez

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Americans don’t hate the media as much as you think

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