Poll: Trust In Press Trending Upward

Americans are increasingly confident in the news media and less so in President Donald Trump’s administration after a tumultuous year in U.S. politics that tested the public’s trust in both institutions, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

The poll of more than 14,300 people found that the percentage of adults who said they had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the press rose to 48 percent in September from 39 percent last November. Earlier this year, Trump branded the entire industry as the “enemy of the American people.”

The percentage of those who said they had “hardly any” confidence in the press dropped to 45 percent from 51 percent over the same period.

Confidence in Trump’s administration moved in the opposite direction.

Reuters/Ipsos, which tracked confidence in major institutions every couple of months after the 2016 presidential election, found in late January that 52 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the new president’s executive branch. That dropped to 51 percent in the May survey and to 48 percent in the latest poll. Trump took office in January.

The poll also found that the shift in trust was not simply a partisan reaction to a Republican president.

From January to September, the percentage of people who had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the executive branch dropped 6 percentage points among Republicans and 3 points among Democrats.

The percentage of those who expressed similar levels of confidence in the media rose 3 points this year among Republicans and 11 points among Democrats.