Trust in News Ticks Up in 2025
Trust in the news was down to the lowest point on record last year in the United States, with only 31 percent of U.S. adults saying that they had either a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in mass media, according to Gallup. Levels of trust have dropped dramatically since the polling organization first started fielding the question in 1972, when it stood at 68 percent.
And yet, against this dismal backdrop, a new survey by Pew Research Center conducted between March 10 and 16, 2025 indicates that there has been a shift, with U.S. adults now more likely to say they trust information from news organizations than they were last year. According to Pew, this change was largely driven by an increase in trust among Republicans, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Caution should be taken with directly comparing different sets of survey data however due to different phrasing of the question and methodologies.
In the Pew Research Center survey, a total of 67 percent of respondents said that they had either some or a lot of trust in national news organizations in 2025, up nine percentage points from 2024. 81 percent of voters who self-identified as aligning with the Democratic Party said they had trust in national news organizations in 2025, while 53 percent of Republican-leaning voters said the same.
Local news organizations continued to encourage higher levels of trust and confidence across the board, with 80 percent of all adults stating they trust such outlets in 2025, up six percentage points from 2024. Democratic Party leaning voters had higher levels of trust in local news organizations than Republicans at 87 percent versus 75 percent. Here the gap between the two groups was 12 percentage points, compared to the wider trust gap for national news outlets of 28 percentage points.
The topic has several further nuances, though. For example, although Democratic Party voters showed higher levels of trust in news outlets, a separate survey by Pew Research Center also found that since 2024, Democrats have become more concerned about press freedoms. Where 38 percent of Democrats were extremely or very concerned about potential restrictions on press freedoms in the U.S., now that figure has risen to 60 percent. Meanwhile for Republicans, the share of respondents saying the same has dropped from 47 percent to 28 percent. This shift among Democrats can be partly explained by the increase in respondents saying that news organizations are influenced a great deal by government interests from 77 percent in 2024 to 84 percent saying the same in 2025.