Despite President Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on the “fake news” media, a new poll from Quinnipiac University finds that more Americans trust the media than Donald Trump.
A majority of Americans, 52%, said they trust the news media over Donald Trump to tell the truth about important issues. Only 37% said they trusted Trump more.
"The media, so demonized by the Trump Administration, is actually a good deal more popular than President Trump," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
Unsurprisingly, responses divided sharply on party lines. Democrats and Independents trust the media more than Trump. Eighty-six percent of Democrats trust the news media more than the president. Among Independents, 50% trust the media more, while 38% trust Trump.
However, 78% of Republicans said they trust Trump more than the media, suggesting that Trump’s efforts to discredit the mainstream news media has succeeded at least among his most ardent supporters. Only 13% of Republicans said they trust the media more than the president.
The poll also revealed a large split between college-educated and non-college-educated white voters. While 55% of white voters without a college degree trust Trump over the media, only 37% of college-educated white voters felt the same way.
Broadly speaking, the new poll suggests that Americans remain generally supportive of the press despite Trump’s attacks. Just last week, Trump accused the “FAKE NEWS media” of being “the enemy of the American People!”
A recent Emerson College poll, however, suggested that Americans trust the president more than the media, but that poll only surveyed voters with landline telephones, generally considered a flawed methodology.
By most measures, the media is prospering in the Trump era. Cable news ratings and newspaper subscriptions are soaring. The president of CNN said recently that Trump’s attacks on the network have not diminished its brand or the public’s trust in CNN “whatsoever.”
Donald Trump’s inability to persuade Americans that he is trustworthy is somewhat surprising given his ubiquity in the mainstream press and the “explosion of right-leaning [online] news sites” supporting his message. An analysis from mediaQuant recently found that, in one month, Trump received a staggering $817 million worth of free media coverage. To put that in perspective, Barack Obama earned an average of $200 million to $500 million in free media per month while president. In addition, relatively new websites like The Daily Caller and The Independent Journal Review echo Trump’s message and strongly supported him during the 2016 campaign.
Americans remain divided over Trump’s self-declared war on the mainstream media, but for now support for the press is holding steady.
