In The Weather Channel We Trust: America’s distrust of mainstream media revealed in YouGov poll

It turns out the only news channel that is trusted by both Republicans and Democrats is The Weather Channel.

Updated on: May 9, 2023, 19:44:33 IST

By HT News Desk

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There’s an old saying in journalism: If someone says it’s raining outside and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out of the window and see what is the truth? For Americans however, it would appear that they would only believe it’s raining if The Weather Channel tells them it’s raining, which remains America’s most trusted news source. The rest it would appear are viewed with deep distrust, divided mostly on partisan lines

Republicans and Democrats only see eye-to-eye on one channel

In a poll by YouGov, Americans were asked how much they trusted 56 mainstream publications whether they found those outlets “very trustworthy”, “trustworthy”, “untrustworthy” and very “untrustworthy”.

The survey found that The Weather Channel (+64 for Democrats and +47) was the most trusted news source for Americans of all persuasions and finds bipartisan appeal among Republicans and Democrats. Overall, it is followed by PBS (+30) and the BBC (+29) and WSJ (24).

For Republicans, the other most trustworthy sources are Fox News (+41) and NewsMax (+28).

For Democrats, the other trustworthy sources are PBS (+62) and ABC and NBC (both +61).

The most distrusted news outlets meanwhile are all Conservative outlets: Infowars (-16), The Daily Caller (-4) and Breitbart (-1).

Other outlets which foment suspicion between Democrats and Republicans are MSNBC (+52 for Dems and -37 for Republicans) and The New York Times (+53 vs -30).

Social Media Scores

The poll also asked respondents how they viewed news shared on social media outlets. The survey suggests most Americans distrust news on social media with TikTok (-36), Snapchat (-26) and Facebook (-22) earning the lowest trust scores.

The only social media platform with a positive net trust score was news (+3). While Democrats are more likely than Republicans to trust news shared on LinkedIn (+22 vs -5), Republicans are more likely to trust news shared on Truth Social, the social media platform created by Trump. Parler, which shut down on April 14 also scored (-17 vs +4) favourably among Republicans.

Meanwhile, younger Americans are likelier than older adults to trust news on social media. Adults under 45 were likelier to view news shared on social media favourably including YouTube (+27), LinkedIn (+21), Twitter (+14) and WhatsApp (+12).

Methodology: The poll was conducted 1500 US citizens from April 3 to April 9 2023, selected among YouGov’s opt-in panel using a random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, voter registration).

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HT News Desk
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