Do Readers Trust Journalists, and Has That Number Moved?

What do the numbers say?

Pew Research Center surveyed 5,195 US adults between 8 and 14 September 2025 through its American Trends Panel. It found 56% expressing at least some trust in information from national news organisations. Six months earlier the figure was 67%; in 2016 it was 76%.

An eleven-point fall in half a year is a large movement for a measure of this kind, and it is the sharper part of a longer slide. Twenty points have gone since 2016, which is roughly a quarter of the original figure.

Local news has not held up either, but it has held higher. Seventy percent of adults report at least some trust in local news organisations, down from 80% in March 2025 and 82% in 2016. The gap between national and local trust is now fourteen points.

The threshold being measured deserves attention before the movement is interpreted. Pew's question combines “a lot” and “some” trust into a single figure, which is a generous bar: a respondent who trusts national news organisations only somewhat is counted on the same side of the line as one who trusts them completely. That 56% is therefore the permissive reading of the state of trust, not the flattering-to-critics one, and the stricter measure sits below it.

That framing also explains why an eleven-point fall in six months is more striking than it first appears. Movement at a permissive threshold means people are not merely downgrading from a lot to some — they are crossing out of the category altogether.

Is this one political side losing trust?

No, and that is the finding most often misreported. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents sit at 44%, down from 53% in March 2025 and from 70% in 2016. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents sit at 69% — still substantially higher, but their lowest since Pew began asking, and down from 81% in March.

The partisan gap is wide and the direction is common. A twelve-point fall among Democrats in six months is not explained by anything specific to conservative media criticism, and it suggests a decline in the standing of the category rather than a realignment within it.

The size of the Democratic fall is the part that resists a political reading. Twelve points in six months, from a group that has been the category's most reliable constituency, is a larger single-period movement than anything recorded on the Republican side in the same window. Whatever is driving it is not a response to criticism of the press from one direction, because it is happening fastest among the people least receptive to that criticism.

It also narrows what the figures can be used to argue. A placement pitched on the basis that coverage reaches a trusting audience has to specify which audience: 44% of one half of the country extends even qualified trust to national outlets, and the other half's figure is falling faster than theirs.

What is happening with younger readers?

Among adults under 30, trust in national news organisations is 51% and trust in social media sites is 50%. For that cohort the two categories have converged to within a point.

That convergence is not the same as young people trusting journalism less than their elders in absolute terms; 51% is not a collapse. It is that the alternative has caught up. A generation for whom an institutional news brand and a platform feed carry equivalent credibility will evaluate a placement in a named publication differently from one for whom the masthead settles the question.

The convergence has a mechanical explanation alongside the cultural one. For a reader under 30, a great deal of national news is encountered on social platforms in the first place: the article arrives inside a feed, framed by a platform's interface and adjacent to everything else in it. Asking that cohort to rate news organisations against social media sites is, in part, asking them to distinguish between a source and the surface they met it on.

For anyone weighing coverage, the practical consequence is about where a placement is seen rather than where it is published. If the audience being sought is under 30, the placement's reach is largely determined by whether it travels on a platform, which is a function of the piece being shareable and of someone sharing it, not of the outlet's masthead.

Why does Edelman report a different figure?

The Edelman Trust Barometer for 2026 reports 40% global trust in journalists, against Pew's 56% for US national news organisations. The gap is a measurement artefact rather than a contradiction, and it illustrates why a single trust number should never be quoted without its instrument.

Three differences account for it. Edelman asks about journalists, who are people; Pew asks about news organisations, which are institutions, and the two consistently score differently. Edelman's figure is a global average across 28 countries and roughly 34,000 respondents; Pew's is a US national sample of 5,195. And Edelman's fieldwork ran from late October to mid-November 2025, weeks after Pew's.

Edelman's study is also produced by a communications firm whose clients buy the services its findings bear on, which is disclosed by Edelman and is noted here for the same reason source types are labelled throughout this series. Pew is an independent non-partisan research organisation. Both are credible instruments; they are not the same instrument.

A fourth difference is the response scale itself. Pew's “at least some trust” is a two-level threshold; trust barometers typically ask respondents to rate trust on a nine-point scale and report the proportion scoring in the upper band. Those two instruments would return different numbers from the same population on the same day, before any question of what is being asked about.

None of this makes either figure wrong or the comparison useless. It makes the comparison usable only in one direction: both instruments show the same trajectory, and neither supports a claim about the level without naming which study produced it. A press release citing “40% trust in journalists” alongside a US audience projection is mixing a global average into a national argument.

What follows for anyone seeking coverage?

The first implication is that the credibility transfer a placement is assumed to deliver is smaller than it was, and shrinking measurably. If 44% of one political half of the country extends even some trust to national news organisations, coverage in one is not self-evidently persuasive to that audience.

The second is that local and trade outlets are undervalued by the way placement is usually priced. Local news retains a fourteen-point trust premium over national news, and rate cards are generally built the other way around, pricing national mastheads highest.

The third is that trust is not the only thing coverage supplies. Documentation, citability, search presence and the record a piece leaves behind operate whether or not a reader trusts the outlet. Those are separate arguments, and they are the ones that survive this data.

There is a fourth implication that runs against the grain of the first three. Falling institutional trust raises the value of evidence a reader can verify without trusting anyone: a named author, a dated publication, a citable source, a quote that can be checked. Coverage built that way is more robust to a low-trust environment than coverage that relies on the outlet's authority to carry it, which is an argument for the substance of a placement over the prestige of its destination.

Methodology and limitations

Figures are from the Pew Research Center's survey of 5,195 US adults conducted 8 to 14 September 2025 on its American Trends Panel, weighted to be representative by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation and education, as published in October 2025; and from the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, fielded 23 October to 18 November 2025 among approximately 34,000 respondents across 28 countries. Three limits apply. First, “at least some trust” combines a lot and some, a broad threshold: a movement in the measure may reflect people shifting between those two levels rather than to distrust. Second, the Pew figures describe the United States and the Edelman figure is a global average; neither is a substitute for the other. Third, Edelman is published by a communications firm with a commercial interest in the field it measures, which is disclosed by the publisher and labelled in the sources below. No causal claim is made here about why trust has fallen.

Conclusion

Trust in national news organisations fell eleven points in six months, to 56%, and twenty points since 2016. The decline runs through both parties, including a twelve-point fall among Democrats, which makes it a problem for the category rather than a realignment inside it. Local news retains a fourteen-point premium over national news and is priced as though the reverse were true. For anyone buying coverage on the theory that a masthead confers credibility, the measured amount of credibility available to confer is smaller each time it is measured — which does not make coverage worthless, but does mean the argument for it has to rest on something more durable than the reader's faith in the outlet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

1. official Pew Research Center, 2025. “How Americans' trust in information from news organizations and social media sites has changed over time”, published 29 October 2025. Survey of 5,195 US adults, 8–14 September 2025, American Trends Panel.
2. official Pew Research Center, 2026. “Majority of Americans express low confidence in journalists to act in the public's best interests”, published 11 February 2026.
3. vendor research Edelman, 2026. 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, fielded 23 October to 18 November 2025, approximately 34,000 respondents across 28 countries. Published by a communications firm operating in the field it measures.