As part of Knight Foundation’s belief that a strong Fourth Estate is paramount to a thriving democracy, the organization has worked with Gallup to study Americans’ trust in the news media, consistently finding that their level of confidence is driven by perceptions of news organizations’ accuracy, bias and transparency. However, a new report finds that there are additional factors that contribute to Americans’ trust in the media.
“American Views: Trust, Media and Democracy, Part 2” explores the disconnect between newsrooms’ efforts to rebuild the public’s trust and the continued decline of confidence in that effort by posing questions that distinguish between the practical and emotional dimensions of trust. The findings show that “emotional trust” in news organizations is meaningfully linked to whether people want to pay to receive news coverage and to how they feel in general about the state of American democracy. CONTINUED
Knight Foundation
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