Journalism’s Better Days

Younger Americans, born after 1985, may have no frame of reference for the current state of journalism which is highly partisan and considered untrustworthy (at least to partisans on the opposite side). The Gallup Organization’s data shows that trust in “Mass Media” (not identical to but related to journalism) is way down, from 72 percent in 1976 to 28 percent in 2025. The reverse is also true. People who answered positively to survey questions about trust in media, whether they had “None at all,” went from 4 percent in 1976 to 34 percent in 2025. In between those answers was “Not very much” trust in media, which hit a high point of 41 percent in 2016 and has fluctuated since (36 percent in 2025).