• by Erik Sass , September 30, 2010

The proportion of Americans who claim they don't trust news reporting by the mass media continues to creep up, increasing from 56% in 2009 to 57% this year, according to Gallup's recent Governance poll, which surveyed 1,019 U.S. adults from Sept. 13-16.

This is the fourth year that distrust of the media has grown in the poll, as reflected in the number of Gallup respondents who said they have "little or no trust" in the established news outlets. The proportion expressing some degree of trust -- 43% -- is the lowest it has been in decades, even exceeding several years of abysmal credibility ratings in the 1970s, according to Gallup.

The main reason cited for distrust is political bias, with 48% of the respondents saying they believe the news media is too liberal, compared to 15% who believe it is too conservative. These proportions are roughly the same as they have been over the last decade.

Gallup also found that Democrats and liberals "remain far more likely than other political and ideological groups" to trust the media, with 59% of Democrats and 54% of liberals evincing "a great deal of trust" compared to just 32% and 33% for Republicans and conservatives, respectively.

Also, 39% of Independents and 47% of moderates expressed the same amount of trust in mass media news. The news media ranked slightly above Congress in credibility -- but it still came below the executive and judicial branches of government.