A new study from research firm Simmons gauges consumer trust of the media. Several old media were at the top of the list, led by The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal is trusted by 57.7% of respondents. It was followed by several other traditional media outlets–ABC News at 55.9%, CBS News at 55.4%, BBC News at 55.2%, and NBC News at 54.1%. Forbes was the only magazine on the list at 54.2%

Several newspapers were near the top–The New York Times at 53.8%, The Washington Post at 55.3%, and USA Today at 51.1%. Other newspapers were well down the list with the LA Times at 42.9%, the Chicago Tribune at 44.8%, and the San Francisco Chronicle at 34%

The two major news services ranked near the middle with Reuters at 46.6% and Bloomberg at 46.3%

Several partisan media were the bottom dwellers in the study with Breitbart at 27.4%, DailyKos at 27.4%, Palmer Report at 26.1%, Occupy Democrats at 24.7%, InfoWars at 24.3% and Daily Caller at 22.5%

The researchers for the Simmons News Media Trust Index pointed out that the media, in general, is losing the war for trustworthiness:

Based on our study, it is clear that news media is in crisis overall. The average percentage of respondents who rated news sources as trustworthy or very trustworthy was just 40.1% – not a ringing endorsement for journalism in general.

The same researchers worry that “fake news” has tainted all media to some extent. The results appear to show that.

Methodology: The Simmons Research News Media Trust Index was a subset of the Simmons Omnibus Study, fielded from August 14th to August 21st, 2018 with a sample of 2009 online respondents weighted to the US population. The margin of error was ± 2.2%.

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.