Where Americans Get Their News

As Americans continue to seek news from a larger, more diverse array of sources, disparities in the level of perceived accuracy have developed simply based on the medium communicating information. The graph below illustrates such differences, and suggests that many viewers believe more traditional, established forms of media over those that are newer, which often offer input from a larger variety of sources.

Additional disparities exist between local news networks and sources that are nationally syndicated. In addition, trust in both sources dropped when comparing respondent answers of a 2022 Pew Research Poll to those of the same poll in 2016.

Similar trends have been observed in specific mainstream news sources like ABC, The New York Times, NPR, and many other well-known national networks across multiple mediums. Dips in trust were seen in nearly every organization between polls in April 2019 and May 2021, followed by increases in the period between May 2021 and February 2022. Regardless, one must ask, what is the state of Americans’ trust in news?

How Politics Play A Part

Political news coverage has always caused differences in preferred news platforms; nearly everyone in the country would likely agree that MSNBC and Fox News lean towards the Democratic and Republican Parties respectively.

According to results from a recent Gallup phone survey, however, people of different political affiliations have vastly different perceptions of news reliability, and levels of trust within parties even change year to year.

A 2020 Pew Research Study dives further into party divides, detailing the higher number of sources Democrats trust as opposed to Republicans. According to survey results, Republicans are much more likely to rely solely on Fox for political and election news, while Democrats are more likely to utilize CNN as well as a wider variety of networks.

The study goes on to add that these gaps have actually increased within the past few years, specifically listing Trump’s attacks on certain mainstream news networks as reasons for this increase in distrust among Republicans specifically.

It’s worth noting that this article was published in January 2020, before several deeply political events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and claims of widespread election fraud leading up to the events at the Capitol on January 6. Regardless, polarization around the country continues to be a serious issue, and its effects are obvious in the news media Americans consume.

Generations Divided

Age has been found to play a considerable factor in many Americans’ news media consumption. Americans demonstrated varied preferences in news media sources when divided along generational lines.

Similar generational divides are visible when comparing sources based on consumers’ perceived accuracy.

Overall, it seems as though older consumers are more likely to trust established mediums that have existed for some time, while younger consumers are more open to newer forms of media like social media. Higher overall levels of trust in more established mediums are observed across all age groups, however.

Issues of Identity

Like all other aspects of American society, one would be remiss in failing to acknowledge the potential of cultural differences to affect the level of trust certain viewers have when viewing news media. One 2018 study by the Economist’s YouGov polling service found significant differences in opinions on media reliability between multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds.

An additional study from the same source showed highlighted differences in the perceived occurrence of “fake news” according to people’s racial and ethnic backgrounds. White audiences were shown to believe they often encountered fake news more than Black audiences, while Hispanic audiences and those of other, unspecified backgrounds fell somewhere between the two.

Such trends are interesting when one considers the lack of representation of Black and Hispanic news directors in comparison to their share of the entire country’s population. Other studies have additionally pointed to biased reporting that disproportionately overrepresents Black crime suspects, while underrepresenting and completely ignoring white and Latino suspects respectively.

A more recent study focused on the perceived accuracy of local newspapers between different races, demonstrating much smaller differences in this specific type of news. One may wonder whether certain mediums affect the cultural relevancy and level of perceived bias in news, as well as the consequences of different reporting styles from those creating content to suit such platforms. More data and studies will of course be needed to explore these questions further, but they are worth considering.

Added Platforms: A Blessing or Curse?

As we established earlier, Americans, especially those of younger generations, increasingly rely on social media as their primary source of news. One study from the Pew Research Center shows that Twitter and Facebook are the most used sources by far, but platforms like TikTok, Reddit, Youtube, and Instagram are not far behind.

But although more Americans rely on these platforms as news sources than ever before, many people express concerns about the accuracy of news shared on social media.

Such concerns make sense, as anyone can create and share whatever they please, and only moderators can delete or label posts that have been proven to be false. We have even seen widespread misinformation in serious emergencies affecting the general public, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless, social media will continue to be a source of information in the future due to its ease of access. The real test will be how journalists and the audiences they serve adapt to make sure the information they receive is as credible as possible.