Three decades after Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first web server, the technologies that once promised to usher in a new era of democracy are now also being used to spread disinformation and sow distrust. Amid a global pandemic and the contentious political events surrounding the 2020 U.S. election, the potential for harm has grown...

There is a widening gulf between American aspirations for and assessments of the news media. With each passing benchmark study, the American people render deeper and increasingly polarised judgments about the news media and how well it is fulfilling its role in American democracy.

The findings in this study present a dilemma for local news. The data suggest that moving into more aggressive coverage of social and political issues could further polarise views — and possibly lead to an erosion of trust. However, these are not issues that local news organizations can abandon without abdicating some of their mandate...

This report demonstrates the relationships that sharing and conducting research have with trust in media by analyzing the results of the Gallup/Knight Foundation experiment, which used a custom-built news aggregation website.

Amid the changing informational landscape, media trust in the U.S. has been eroding, making it harder for the news media to fulfill their democratic responsibilities of informing the public and holding government leaders accountable.