For 40 years, Waco Tribune-Herald reporter Carl Hoover has been the man Wacoans dial when they need arts and entertainment coverage. A veteran of the legacy media market, Hoover has seen the rise of the internet and social media, the downfall of print journalism, and now the proliferation of AI use, and notices invitations for coverage have become fewer and farther between.
“I probably am seeing more of, not so much distrust, but irrelevance. We have fallen off the radar for many people,” said Hoover of the news outlet.
But Hoover’s work as a local journalist points to a much larger trend. Nearly half of all Americans — 43 percent — report they have no trust at all in the mainstream media, according to Wave 7 of the Baylor Religion Survey. Using data collected in the months following the 2024 presidential election, the research reveals that the general population’s trust in journalism is decreasing and deeply partisan.
“The fracturing of both news and entertainment across increasingly specific demographic lines since the 1980s, along with the rise of the Internet and social media, has inevitably led people to gather in news and entertainment bubbles where they only hear and read what they want to hear and read,” explains Dr. James Kendrick, Baylor professor of film and digital media and undergraduate program director.
The Baylor researchers polled Americans on their trust toward major institutions and key figures in American life. Nearly a quarter of respondents reported they don’t trust journalists — the individuals as people — at all. Small businesses and hospitals are among the most trusted institutions, while the mainstream media was ranked the third-least-trusted institution among Americans, followed by big corporations and the Republican Party.
Political leanings, the researchers discovered, are highly predictive in Americans’ trust in the news. When dividing the group by voting behavior, 70 percent of people who voted for Donald Trump reported they do not trust the mainstream media, as opposed to 23 percent of Kamala Harris’ voters.
When looking at journalists as individuals, 45 percent of Trump voters expressed they do not trust journalists at all. Harris’ voters are more likely to trust journalists, with 93 percent reporting at least a little trust. The study reads, “Overall, we find that Trump voters have an exceptionally high trust in Donald Trump; in fact, they do not trust any institution or person as much as him.”
“For more than a decade, Trump and his political allies have beaten the drum of ‘mainstream media bias’ against him, which allows him to dispute even the most seemingly obvious facts,” said Kendrick.
But partisan divides are far from the only factor fueling Americans’ growing distrust of journalism. Hoover said skepticism surrounding news and media has been around for decades, but the change is in the abundance of options now available.
“In the ‘60s, you had 3 major television networks, and most everybody was sort of reporting the same,” Hoover said.
Increased options for network news, the internet, and social media have given Americans the ability to customize their news to fit their preferences, beliefs, and political leanings.
“You get to pick a news or coverage that fits your identity,” he said.
Hoover said he also notices the role of attention span, or rather the lack thereof, within the factors fueling Americans’ growing distrust in journalism.
“News becomes shorter; it becomes flashier …,“ said Hoover. “In a lot of people’s minds, news just becomes part of the entertainment.”
In an article published earlier this month in The Atlantic titled “The End of Reading is Here,” Rose Horowitch discusses the current literacy crisis as Americans read less and less. This includes not only books but also news consumption.
“Americans also get much less of their news through reading than they once did,” Horowitch writes. “In 1975, about half of 20-somethings said they read the newspaper every day. Today less than 10 percent do. Most Americans now get the news on their phones and laptops, and 40 percent say they prefer to watch or listen to online news rather than read it.”
Hoover adds that a consequence of more Americans sourcing their news online is they are consuming less work produced by professional journalists and more from influencers and social media personalities disseminating the news on their personal platforms.
“[With] the rise of influencers, my question is what makes them the expert in their field?” said Hoover.
Hoover is not the only one to take note of the role that social media influencers currently play in the journalism landscape — it has become a well-documented phenomenon.
According to Pew Research Center, about 37 percent of American adults under 30 regularly get their news from “news influencers” on social media. Some 77 percent of these news influencers have no affiliation or background with a news organization.
“You have a media market where you have legacy media, but then you also have influencers … bloggers … podcasters. How do you know [if they are] vetting their material or if they have a point of view that’s shaping the information you’re getting?” said Hoover.
“It is warping the information ecosystem and leading to increasing erosion of trust,” Kendrick adds. “This is why we need journalism education more than ever to train the next generation of journalists to work within this increasingly complex media ecosystem to convey the facts directly and fairly.
Hoover says AI is likely also playing a role in media accuracy and distrust.
“One of the things we may see more of is, as more and more people use AI like ChatGPT, that becomes their major source for information …” said Hoover. “There’s not as much rigorous examination of where this information is coming from.”
Kendrick also touches on the power of AI and misinformation, concluding that it is more important now than ever for Americans to develop strong literacy and critical-thinking skills.
“I am [worried] about the way AI is working within this system to further warp and delimit the way we get information,” said Kendrick. “It creates the appearance of openness when, in fact, it is shutting down channels and limiting the scope of information we get on any given day.”
While most of this distrust is at a national level and focused on major news organizations and media outlets, the effects are still impacting local newsrooms. However, Hoover says it is not a rising distrust he sees, but a lack of engagement.
With more news available across a diverse range of platforms, it is less likely that Americans will look to their own local media stations for information, pushing them dangerously close to, as Hoover says, “irrelevance.”
Hoover and Kendrick both agree that there is a path forward, and it starts with equipping the next generation.
“Studies show that younger Americans feel the least confident in their ability to distinguish real news from false information,” said Kendrick. “It is incumbent on us to ensure that the next generation is educated in this terrain so they can use information productively to make the world a better place.”
