When It Comes To News Personalities..Who Do We Trust?

Americans of opposing political parties are sharply divided on how much they trust the news reported by national media organizations, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll.

YouGov asked 1,500 Americans where they get their news from and how much they trust a variety of prominent media organizations and news anchors. The poll, conducted from March 26 - 29, shows that while Americans are more likely to trust than distrust many prominent news sources, there are very few organizations that are trusted by more than a small proportion of Americans on both sides of the political aisle. In fact, the most Americans overall place trust in an organization that rarely covers domestic politics: the Weather Channel (52% of Americans trust it). The Weather Channel is trailed by the U.K. news outlet, BBC (39%), the national public broadcaster, PBS (41%), and The Wall Street Journal (37%).

In addition to asking about the trustworthiness of national news organizations, YouGov asked about the trustworthiness of several news anchors and media personalities. The names were chosen for the survey from an open-end question on a prior survey asking respondents to share the names of news personalities they trusted the most.

Many Americans, however, are not familiar with many of the individuals surveyed, so YouGov analyzed the results by including responses for the name of each news personality only from people who did not say that they “don’t know” the name. When rebased, the most trusted people in the news business for Americans are Anderson Cooper (44% who are familiar with Cooper trust him), ABC News’ David Muir (40%), and Fox News’ Bret Bair (39%). (Far fewer people were unfamiliar with the news organizations, so our analysis of trust in those included all respondents, making the numbers not comparable.)

Among Republicans who are familiar with the news personalities, the most trusted people all are with Fox News: Tucker Carlson (65% of Republicans who are familiar with Carlson trust him), Laura Ingraham (61%), Sean Hannity (59%), and Bair (54%). Among Democrats who are familiar with news personalities, the most trusted people are Cooper (75%), MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (65%), ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos (63%), and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer (62%).