Americans Don't Trust TV News

The good news is more Americans trust TV news this year than they did last year. 

The bad news, it's only 23 percent of Americans that trust TV news. Last year that number stood at 21 percent, so at least TV news is moving in a positive direction.  

In the new Gallup poll the only institutions television news and newspapers beat out this year are big business, organized labor, health maintenance organizations and Congress.

Americans expressed the most confidence in the military, at 76 percent, and small businesses, at 65 percent.

Gallup attributed the drop in confidence to a number of factors, including a growth in social networking websites and an online audience that left news outlets struggling to find their place.

"Americans' confidence in newspapers and television news has been slowly eroding for many years, worsening further since 2007," the report says. "By that point, newspapers and television news had been struggling for years to figure out how to adjust their strategy for a growing Internet audience."

Though all key demographic groups express low levels of confidence in the media, according to the report, the levels of negativity varied by age, education and gender. College graduates are less likely to trust the media than those with only a high school diploma, for example. The poll also found that women are slightly more confident than men in both television news and newspapers. 

H/T US News