According to polls in the early 1970s, nearly three quarters of Americans had a "great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media,” and CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite was called the “most trusted man in America.”
Today, Gallup polls show trust in mass media is down to 31%, and according to our 2017 poll, none of the ten most watched news figures in the country have majority approval, and only one exceeds 34%.
Some point to such data and wring their hands, decrying the decline in media trust as a sign of an increasingly cynical public, or of diminished media standards, but we see it differently.
In the early 70s, network TV news was still a bit of a miracle, piping live video from war zones half a world away, and a comforting one at that — anchors were for the most part middle-aged men with gravitas and comforting affectations.
That novelty has worn off, and unlike the 1970s, mass media today is not just three networks and a daily newspaper or two per city. There is competition from social media, cable news, blogs, newsletters, and podcasts. When options were limited, consumers didn't know what they might be missing, and trust (and viewership) was bound to fall as alternatives came on line.
Not only was trust in the media fifty years ago exaggerated by lack of competition, it was just plain exaggerated. In 1972, a poll conducted by CBS on the trustworthiness of political figures such as Nixon and Agnew, incongruously included Cronkite as the only non-politician option. Cronkite edged out a generic "US Senator" option for the top spot, and CBS used that result to promote their anchor as "the most trusted man in America." Not only is there no evidence he was the most the trusted person in the country, he only occassionally was the most trusted newscaster, finishing behind Howard K Smith, John Chancellor and Harry Reasoner in a 1973 poll before nabbing the top spot in 1974.
Fifty years later, we are under no false illusions of high trust in the media. Gallup's 31% trust figure is regularly cited, and it will come as little surprise that our polls show that no news source that has majority approval by Democrats has more than 12% approval among Republicans, and vice versa.
However, change may be afoot. Gallup reports that the share that have "no trust at all in mass media" dropped in the past two years from 40% to 36%, and in our polls the percentage that did not trust any of the fourteen news sources we listed dropped from 18% in 2022 to 12% today. In the 1970s we didn't know we had a problem with media trust, but we do now; perhaps recognition is the first step to recovery.
