Trends in American Confidence in the Press, 1973-2016

• In Event: 3267 - Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 2. News Media & Society

Abstract

Although President Donald Trump’s constant attacks on the main-stream media often lack a factual basis, the public’s lack of trust in the media may be a hotbed of these attacks. This study analyzes trends in American confidence in the press using data from General Social Surveys 1973-2016. Our trend analysis shows that while the proportions of Americans who had a great deal of, and only some, confidence in the press had declined from 1973 to 2016, the proportion of Americans who had hardly any confidence had continued to rise dramatically during the same period. Our logistic regression analysis finds that either controlling or not controlling for other predictors, the probability of confidence in the press has continuously decreased in the period of 1973-2016. Our findings confirm what has been reported in the literature but provide more accurate estimates by controlling for other predictors. Our study also contributes to the literature by, for the first time, offering empirical evidence on who is more or less likely to have confidence in the news media. This study reveals that men, Republicans, Christians, and higher income people are less likely to have confidence in the press than their respective counterparts. On the other hand, other races are more likely to have confidence in the press than whites, but blacks do not differ significantly from whites in the confidence. Residents in the Northeast and the Midwest are more likely to have confidence in the press than Southerners, but those in the West are not significantly different from Southerners in the confidence. Education and urban/rural residence have no significant effect on confidence in the press.

Authors

• Morsheda Akhter, Texas Woman's University

• Philip Q. Yang, Texas Woman's University