The press, branded the 'enemy' by Trump, increasingly trusted by the public: Reuters/Ipsos poll

Americans are increasingly confident in the news media and less so in President Donald Trump’s administration after a tumultuous year in US politics that tested the public’s trust in both institutions, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released Oct 3. The poll of more than 14,300 people found that the percentage of adults who said they had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the press rose to 48 percent in September from 39 percent last November. Earlier in 2017, President Trump branded the entire industry as the “enemy of the American people.”

The percentage of those who said they had “hardly any” confidence in the press dropped to 45 percent from 51 percent over the same period. Confidence in Trump’s administration moved in the opposite direction. Reuters/Ipsos, which tracked confidence in major institutions every couple of months after the 2016 presidential election, found in late January that 52 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the new president’s executive branch. That dropped to 51 percent in the May survey and to 48 percent in the latest poll. Trump took office in January. In comparison, 57 percent of Americans expressed similar levels of confidence in former Democratic President Barack Obama’s outgoing administration in November.