A new YouGov survey finds that Americans’ trust in the media to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly is low: Only 29% say they have a fair amount or a great deal of trust. More (44%) have at least a fair amount of trust in Donald Trump’s administration to state facts fully, accurately and fairly. The survey also found that Americans are more likely to see the media’s coverage of Trump as too negative than to see it as too positive. Around four in 10 believe the media wants Trump to fail.
Trust in the media is low among Americans. 26% have no trust and confidence at all in the media to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they have no trust and confidence in the media at all (35% vs. 13%). 41% of Americans say they don’t have very much trust or confidence in the media to do this, 24% have a fair amount and only 4% have a great deal — down from 11% who said they had a great deal of trust and confidence in the media in a YouGov survey from January 2017. The drop among Democrats is to 8% from 23%.
Around half of Americans also don’t have much trust in the Trump administration to state the facts fully, accurately, and fairly. 38% of Americans say they have no trust and confidence in the administration to do so, an increase from 2017 when 31% of Americans said this. 13% say they don’t have very much trust and confidence, 19% have a fair amount, and 25% have a great deal, up from 18% in 2017. Only 5% of Democrats have a great deal of trust and confidence in the administration to share facts fully, accurately, and fairly. 52% of Republicans do, up from 38% in 2017.
Only 25% of Americans think the tone of media coverage of Trump has been about right. They are more likely to say media coverage of Trump has been too negative (35%) than to say it’s been too positive (23%, up from 14% in 2017).
42% of Democrats and 6% of Republicans think media coverage of Trump has been too positive. 12% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans think coverage has been too negative.
43% of Americans believe the media wants Trump to fail; far fewer think the media wants him to succeed (16%). Three-quarters (73%) of Republicans believe the media wants Trump to fail. 40% of Independents and 15% of Democrats agree. 7% of Republicans, 11% of Independents, and 32% of Democrats believe the media wants Trump to succeed.
16% of Americans — including 25% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans — believe the media is neutral toward Trump. In 2017, a larger share of Americans (26%) — including 42% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans — believed the media was neutral..
The majority of Americans (59%) think the media should be neutral in its coverage of Trump. 64% of Democrats and 52% of Republicans believe this. 22% of Americans — including 8% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans — think the media should want Trump to succeed, and 10% think the media should want Trump to fail. 18% of Democrats and 4% of Republicans think the media should want Trump to fail.
Related:
- More Americans would take a media outlet's word over Trump's than did in 2016
- Democrats are twice as likely as Republicans to say misinformation on social media is a very serious problem
- Which celebrities do Americans think have been covered unfairly by the media?
See the results for this YouGov survey
— Carl Bialik and Taylor Orth contributed to this article
Methodology: This article includes results from an online survey conducted January 30 - February 3, 2025 among 1,124 U.S. adult citizens. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of adult U.S. citizens. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 presidential vote, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. 2024 presidential vote, at time of weighting, was estimated to be 48% Harris and 50% Trump. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given around November 8, 2024, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4%.
Image: Getty (Andrew Harnik / Staff)
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