Trust for News Sources Split Along Party Lines

America's Top 10 Most Trusted News Sources

According to a new poll released by YouGov, CNN, MSNBC and The New York Times rank among the most polarizing media outlets between the two parties.

YouGov’s 2023 poll is a follow-up to the poll the organization released last year. Conducted between April 3-9, YouGov asked Americans to say whether they trust, distrust or neither trust nor distrust 56 different media organizations. This was up from the 22 outlets that were featured last year. YouGov saw an increase in net trust from 2022 to 2023 for the 22 outlets it originally asked about, which is a nice little wrinkle in this study.

In this year's trust in media poll — conducted from April 3 - 9, 2023 — YouGov asked Americans to say whether they trust, distrust, or neither trust nor distrust the media organizations. From the results, it is possible to determine each outlet's net trust score – that is, how much more likely Americans are to say the outlet is trustworthy or very trustworthy than untrustworthy or very untrustworthy.

Even with the additions to the group of outlets polled about, The Weather Channel remains the most trusted news source among Americans overall. Americans are 53 points more likely to call The Weather Channel trustworthy as they are to call it untrustworthy. It's also the only outlet that YouGov asked about that more Democrats (+64) and Republicans (+47) trust than the shares who distrust it. The Weather Channel is just one of two outlets polled about that a majority of Republicans trust; the other one is Fox News (56% of Republicans trust it, with a net trust score among them of +41).

When it comes to the national rankings, The Weather Channel is followed by national public broadcaster PBS (+30), the U.K. news outlet BBC (+29), and The Wall Street Journal (+24) in national trust. This year's poll has the same group in the top four as last year's poll — even with the additions to this year's poll.

In this poll, the three broadcast networks had similar levels of trust, while there was a slightly lower level of trust in each of the three cable networks: 44% say they trust ABC, 43% trust CBS, 42% trust NBC, 40% trust CNN, 38% trust Fox News, and 36% trust MSNBC.

The findings on trust in several TV networks differ from those of a different YouGov poll question publicized recently. In an advertisement in the New York Times earlier this month/last month, Fox News cited separate YouGov data showing that 41% trust Fox News, compared to 24% who trust ABC News, 22% who trust CNN, 22% for CBS, 21% for NBC, and 18% for MSNBC. In contrast, the 2023 Trust in Media Poll found higher percentages distrusting Fox News (35%) compared to CNN and MSNBC (33% and 30%), though the differences are not statistically significant.

The main differences between the 2023 Trust in Media Poll and the results from YouGov’s Profiles reported in the Fox advertisement are:

Poll results can differ significantly when they are conducted differently and at different times. The Trust in Media Poll was conducted with YouGov's latest methodology for measuring trust in media outlets and is based on opinion as of April 2023. It gives respondents the option to say whether they trust or don't trust each outlet, with gradations for small differences of opinion. ("Trustworthy" vs. "very trustworthy.") They are also able to say they are neutral on an outlet's trustworthiness (finding them "neither trustworthy nor untrustworthy") or "not sure" of their opinion.

The other poll, cited by Fox News in the New York Times, was from YouGov Profiles — an audience identification tool that combines data collected over an extensive period from multiple sources. The composite data are available to Profiles subscribers for audience identification purposes only. The data cited by Fox News in the New York Times advertisement is not the result of any recent nationally representative survey — the question reported was only asked of people who get their news from television, resulting in a sample that skews older.