Washington Post Event Releases Gallup/Knight Foundation Poll Results: Americans Believe Media Play Critical Role in Democracy

By Sue Brinkerhoff Bland, second vice president – communications

In late January 2018, The Washington Post, the Knight Foundation and the University of Virginia hosted an event at the Post called Americans and the Media: Sorting Fact from Fake News. It struck me as a great  opportunity to hear from nationally known communicators about an important topic, so I traveled to Washington for the forum. I hope this report will be of interest to my fellow VPC members. 

On Jan. 23, 2018, The Washington Post, the Knight Foundation and the University of Virginia hosted an event at the Post called “Americans and the Media: Sorting Fact from Fake News.” Journalists and media educators discussed challenges of reporting in a 24/7 news cycle, bias and objectivity in reporting, censorship and American trust in the media, and results of a landmark survey that shed new light on American faith in the media.

The 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey of more than 19,000 U.S. adults aged 18 and older shows most Americans believe it’s harder to discern accurate news from non-trustworthy content.  According to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation report, “Americans believe the media continue to have a critical role in our democracy but are not very positive about how the media are fulfilling that role.”

Americans, the survey responses show, trust their local newspapers, national television network news, and major national newspapers more than cable news, news aggregators and internet-only news websites as credible sources of vital information.

Of Gallup/Knight Foundation survey respondents who could name an objective media outlet, Fox is cited by 24 percent, followed by CNN with 13 percent, and NPR in third place with 10 percent.

Program panelists included:

Fox News Anchor Bret Baier, PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff, American Urban Radio Network Washington Bureau Chief April Ryan, Center for Democracy & Technology President Nuala O’ Connor, New York University Professor Jay Rosen and BuzzFeed Media Editor Craig Silverman and others.

The Gallup study was supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Open Society Foundations.

You can read more about the study here: knightfoundation