Is News Polarization an American Problem?

Depending on who you are in the United States, trust in the news has either sky rocketed or nose-dived, according to Reuters Digital News Report. About half of people on the left trust the news most of the time, while merely 9 percent of people on the right trust the news most of the time. Looking at the data, President Trump’s entrance into the presidential election certainly acted as an inflection point, driving the public’s perception of news trust worthiness to either side of the political spectrum.

As a point of comparison, the United Kingdom has seen the opposite trend. Back in 2015, there was about a 10-percentage point gap in the trust worthiness of news between people on the opposite side of the political spectrum. During that time, the U.S. had a similar spread in trust between partisans. After 2015, the UK had its own inflection point: Brexit. Instead of being further driven apart, that trust gap has narrowed, though overall both sides trust the news less than they did in 2015. Generally, people in the United Kingdom do not hold that same level of distrust as their counterparts in the U.S. do.