A plurality of Americans think that most journalists try to manipulate the news for political or commercial purposes, according to a poll conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in collaboration with the Medill Local News Initiative and the Alliance for Trust in Media.
Just more than one-third of respondents said most journalists try to report the news as accurately as possible.
There was a clear partisan split. More than three quarters of Republicans (77%) said most journalists try to manipulate the news, compared with 24% of Democrats. Meanwhile, 61% of Democrats said most journalists try to report the news as accurately as possible, compared with just 11% of Republicans. Democrats and Republicans include respondents who lean toward each party.
Views also differed by education. Nearly half of college graduates (48%) said most journalists try to report the news as accurately as possible, significantly more than those with some college (31%) or a high school diploma or less (30%).
“I think it all has to do in part with reflecting people’s level of connection to journalism as an industry, and people who believe that journalists are trying to report the news as accurately as possible tend to be those who are consuming a lot more of it,” said Benjamin Toff, the Alliance’s research director and the director of the Minnesota Journalism Center at the University of Minnesota, where he serves as an associate professor at the journalism school. “Now, we don’t know which is the cause and effect of that, but we know that there’s a strong relationship there.”
These survey results are the first in a partnership between Medill and the Alliance from an upcoming series of quarterly polls looking at trust in journalism. The Alliance is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts research, provides media literacy training and hosts podcasts to help foster trust between news organizations and their audiences. The Medill Local News Initiative, part of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, is a research and development project designed to bolster the sustainability of local news in America.
These national surveys are being conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago and are a collaboration among researchers for the Alliance and Medill. The Medill Local News Initiative and the Alliance will publish survey findings quarterly in an effort to provide deeper understanding about the relationship between news organizations and consumers.
This first survey also measured Americans’ trust in media specifically related to the upcoming 2026 Midterm Elections. Results from those findings will be published Thursday.
“The gap between audiences’ view of journalists’ motivation and what all of us believe are actually our motivations is striking,” said Eric Schurenberg, the Alliance’s executive director. “It suggests either that a) we are totally fooling ourselves; or b) people have an overly cynical idea of what drives newsrooms. It may be a bit of both.”
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents said they have at least some trust in local news outlets, the highest among the news outlets in the survey. Just over half of respondents said the same about major newspapers (56%) and national network TV (54%).
News from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, online groups or communities (e.g., Facebook Groups, Nextdoor) and content creators on social media were the most distrusted sources, with a little more than two-thirds of respondents saying they had little or no trust in each of them.
Still, as previous research including Medill’s 2026 survey of Chicago news consumers has found, creators, social media platforms and online groups are frequently cited as sources from which people are consuming news.
“It’s important to remember that people consume news for a variety of reasons — because it’s convenient, out of habit, it’s in their feed, it’s what their friends share,” said Stephanie Edgerly, Medill’s associate dean of research and professor who helped lead this survey. “Low trust does not necessarily mean low use. What it often means is that people are consuming news with their guard up or they’re consuming news while doubting its accuracy.”
The survey also showed gaps across age and education in how often respondents said they consider various factors when deciding whether a news story can be trusted.
Majorities or near-majorities of respondents said they always or often consider how neutral or biased the language in the story seems, the reputation of the organization or the journalists reporting it, their own gut feeling or instinct about the story and who owns the organization reporting the story.
But older respondents and respondents with higher educational attainment were, in most cases, more likely to say they always or often consider these factors.
“There may be a level of confidence, that the more you feel like you know what goes on in the newsroom, the more confident you may feel that you can trust an organization, or the words on the page, or the faces on the screen,” Schurenberg said.
Details from the poll’s findings about the media and the 2026 Midterm Elections will be released on Thursday.
About the survey
The Alliance-Medill poll was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago from October 8 to 12, 2026, among a nationally representative sample of 1,057 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. Respondents were drawn from NORC’s AmeriSpeak® Omnibus® Panel and completed the survey online or by telephone, in English.
The survey was funded by the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the Alliance for Trust in Media (ATM). Questions were developed jointly by Medill and Alliance researchers. The polling project partnership was formed by Tim Franklin, professor and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Medill, and Eric Schurenberg, founder of the Alliance.
AmeriSpeak is a probability-based panel, meaning households are randomly selected to join rather than volunteering. NORC samples U.S. households from its National Sample Frame and recruits them by mail, telephone and in-person visits. The panel covers about 97% of U.S. households. Households without internet access can take part by phone.
To ensure the results reflect the U.S. adult population, the data are weighted to U.S. Census Bureau benchmarks for sex, age, education, race and ethnicity, and region.
The margin of sampling error for the full sample is ±4.1 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, accounting for the design effect from weighting. Margins of error are larger for subgroups, such as age groups or political parties. Reported differences between groups are statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias. The cumulative response rate (AAPOR RR3) is 4.5%. For more about AmeriSpeak, visit AmeriSpeak.norc.org.
“High trust” combines “a great deal” and “quite a bit”; “little or no trust” combines “not too much” and “none.” Party groups include those who lean toward a party. Party identification was measured on a seven-point scale. Democrats (strong, not so strong and leaning Democrats) and Republicans (strong, not so strong and leaning Republicans) include those who lean toward each party; independents are those who do not lean toward either party.
