In a country where technology has become one of the forefronts of communication Americans must be able to trust what the government says.
However, in recent years, news media has played an active role in the level of trust the American people have in their government.
“Media polarization has increased in the past half-decade (fig. 2), and both liberal and conservative partisan media are likely contributing to polarization in the U.S. Cable news networks – of which Fox News and MSNBC are frequent targets of media bias allegations – have become “birthing centers for polarizing rhetoric,” according to the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Affairs.
There is a clear divide on whether trust in the government is impacted when it comes to news media. In 2020 Rutgers led a study that found, “online misinformation, or “fake news,” lowers people's trust in mainstream media across party lines.” It is important to examine what is causing the difference in levels of trust in the United States government because of news media.
A current issue that is discussed a lot in modern politics is the term, “fake news” vs legitimate news. Fake news is defined as, “fabricated information that looks like news content but lacks the editorial standards and practices of legitimate journalism.”
Depending on the party affiliation someone has could determine whether they trust the government more or not depending on the news.
"Strong liberals exposed to right-leaning misinformation may be most likely to reject its claims and mistrust the current Republican government,” said lead author Katherine Ognyanova, assistant professor of communication at Rutgers University–New Brunswick’s School of Communication and Information.
The distrust found in our news media is causing our democracy to crumble from the inside out. Although we must have political discussions, “polarization and animosity based on misconceptions of the other side threatens to misdiagnose problems, leading people to battle imagined enemies and distracting from opportunities for transformative reform,” according to the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Affairs.
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