Press Widely Criticized, But Trusted More than Other Information Sources

Negative opinions about the performance of news organizations now equal or surpass all-time highs on nine of 12 core measures the Pew Research Center has been tracking since 1985. However, these bleak findings are put into some perspective by the fact that news organizations are more trusted sources of information than are many other institutions, including government and business.

Further, people rate the performance of the news organizations they rely on much more positively than they rate the performance of news organizations generally. And the public’s impressions of the national media may be influenced more by their opinions of cable news outlets than their views of other news sources, such as network or local TV news, newspapers or Internet news outlets. When asked what first comes to mind when they think of “news organizations,” most name a cable news outlet, with CNN and Fox News receiving the most mentions by far.