Americans Trust Trump as Much as the Political Media to Tell the Truth

The national political press began Donald Trump’s first term in 2017 with a slight trust advantage over the president, but as the industry gathers to celebrate itself with a series of events surrounding the White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner in Washington, that’s no longer the case.

According to Morning Consult’s April 18-20 survey, voters are evenly divided (at 37%) when asked whether they trust the national political press or the Trump White House more to tell the truth, eroding a 6-point advantage the media held when we first asked this question eight years ago. 

In an unsurprising development, Republicans have become even more likely to trust Trump more (from 65% to 72%). But interestingly, Democrats’ confidence in the political press has fallen a bit (from 66% to 61%).

The news media that covers Washington is still more trusted by college-educated voters, but even that advantage has tightened since 2017 as the president has gained currency  with those without a four-year degree.

As our industry analyst Ellyn Briggs found earlier this year, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to consume traditional media — especially from broadcast networks. Our data shows that usage is correlated with perceptions of trustworthiness.

As of late February, Democrats were 12 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say broadcast news networks offer the most trustworthy news sources (31% to 19%). On the other side of the equation, Republicans were likely to trust cable news (23% to 19%) or social media (20% to 16%) the most.

The bottom line

Trump’s ascendancy to the White House in 2016 was a by-product of long-term partisan polarization of trust in the media, and our trends since he took office only underline that the distrust continues to deepen.

That’s a problem for the networks, newspapers and digital outlets that are trying to run a successful business based on objective journalism, especially as we wade further into a social media age that only makes it easier to ensconce yourself in an information bubble of your choice. 

It’s also a problem for the U.S. political ecosystem, which at minimum requires an acknowledgment of the basic realities up for societal debate. That Trump’s supporters believe him over anything else poses a challenge not just for his opponents looking to defeat him, but also for his allies looking to influence him. 

And while Trump won’t be the leader of the Republican Party forever, all evidence suggests that whoever takes his place will do so by securing a similar feedback loop with the country’s conservative voter base. That makes the outlook for media trust all the more bearish.