Why Does Everyone Hate The Media?

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Our question for today: Why do Americans hate/distrust the press so much?

I’m thinking we’ll break this down into three parts:

Who hates what? What do we know about which groups of Americans distrust which media outlets/types? How has that changed?
Why? What do we know about what’s causing trust to sink?
The Trump factor. How does coverage of the Trump administration — in particular, the Russia investigation — fit into all of this?

Does that work for everyone? Everyone ready?

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): Here. But … on a plane!

micah: Do it, Clare!

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): Nate’s on a plaaaannnnne!!

micah: lol. That’ll never not be funny.

OK, first up: Who hates what?

Let’s start broad and then get as specific as we can.

clare.malone: Well, Micah, Americans in general have not loved the press for decades and decades! According to Gallup, the most trust we had in newspapers was in 1979, when 51 percent of Americans said they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers. Downhill since then!

I wrote about it in this story from 2016, post-election. Only 20 percent of Americans trusted newspapers in 2016. Yoikes.

natesilver: Republicans hate the media a lot, and Democrats hate the media a little.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): According to a December 2017 Poynter report:

The survey found that 74% of respondents who identify as Democrats, or who lean Democratic, have “a great deal” (19%) or “a fair amount” (55%) of confidence in the media. A poll taken in September 2016 asked the same question and found that 51% of Democrats expressed the same level of support, meaning that their confidence has increased 23 percentage points in just one year.

Seventy-four percent confidence in the press is the highest level registered for Democrats since 1997, the earliest date for which similar data is available.

Meanwhile, the numbers among Republicans are declining.

micah: Holy moly, look at President Trump’s effect:

clare.malone: Anyhow. Yes, Republicans trust the media less. And it started well before this election cycle. A couple of people I’ve talked to about this — Republicans, expert and non — have cited the misreporting about George W. Bush’s military service as one of the first times they can remember an inflection point, a feeling that the media was partisan.

So this is a theme that goes back a ways.

micah: But Democrats gaining trust is new, right? And seems Trump-related? The enemy of my enemy, I guess.

clare.malone: I mean, I’m old enough to remember when Democratic primary voters — in particular, Bernie Sanders supporters — were berating the media about coverage during the 2016 election.

micah: That was then, Clare. Now we have President Trump.

natesilver: Yeah. It’s all about Trump, and saying you like the media is a way to say you’re not on Team Trump.

clare.malone: Indeed. Just wanted to cite this, so that readers know that this elephant never forgets.