The ability of fake news stories to gain purchase with portions of the American public and, potentially, impact outcomes in our politics was almost certainly facilitated by the public’s profound lack of trust and confidence in the media. American politics today is saturated with allegations of bias and bad faith on the part of all portions of the mass media, yielding an environment in which universally trusted media sources are few and far between (if not nonexistent). This environment is fertile soil for fake news, as the lack of trust in the veracity of traditional mass media.


However, it is important to recognize that fake news and related phenomena do not appear to have caused the decline in trust and confidence. Rather, levels of distrust in media have been rising steadily since at least the 1970s and the proportion of Americans who express a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media has steadily declined since the mid-1990s to a nadir in 201 (2017 shows a small rebound). The lack of public trust and confidence in media in America can, in the context of fake news, be considered something of a pre-existing condition, an existing vulnerability that allowed fake news to flourish in recent years and that, absent a major shift in public sentiment, is only likely to get worse.


This chart presents public opinion data collected annually by Gallup Analytics on the question of public trust and confidence in the mass media from the mid-1990s to the present. This chart does not present three data points from the mid-1970s, also from Gallup, which show much higher levels of public trust in the media than in the 1990s.

Fertile Soil for Fake News:

Public trust and confidence in the mass media in the United States, 1997 to 2017

Legend: Blue - Great Deal Orange - Fair Amount Green - Not Very Much Red - None At All
Data Source: Gallup Analytics -- Visualization Source: Mike Bostock