Hoo Boy: Protection Racket Media Panic Ahead With These Gallup Numbers

Readers may remember Chubby Checker’s big hit, “Limbo Rock.” The calypso-inspired song hit #2 on Billboard and took the top spot on Casbox in 1962, and remains a staple on oldies stations. The repeated phrase, “How low can you go?”, still inspires backaches and laughter at parties, especially after a few drinks. 

Well, executives at Protection Racket Media outlets may need more drinks to get past the latest data from Gallup on trust in their product. As it turns out, “how low can you go” has been a mission statement as well as a refrain. Today’s iteration of their longitudinal surveys on media confidence hit a new low … again:

Americans’ confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago.

Meanwhile, seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have “not very much” confidence (36%) or “none at all” (34%). 

When Gallup began measuring trust in the news media in the 1970s, between 68% and 72% of Americans expressed confidence in reporting. However, by the next reading in 1997, public confidence had fallen to 53%. Media trust remained just above 50% until it dropped to 44% in 2004, and it has not risen to the majority level since. The highest reading in the past decade was 45% in 2018, which came just two years after confidence had collapsed amid the divisive 2016 presidential campaign.

The news is bad for the PRM across the partisan board. The media scores particularly badly among Republicans, of course, where the number for combined great/fair levels of confidence (with the other options being “not very much” and “none at all”) dropped to single digits for the first time ever. Sixty-two percent of Republicans choose “none at all” when asked about their confidence level in the media. It’s not much better among independents either, where the great/fair level matches the series’ historical low of 27% found in last year’s iteration. The new overall low is now being driven by Democrats, where great/fair confidence fell to its 2016 nadir of 51%. 

The age demos are just as bad, if not quite as dramatic. Seniors have the most confidence in the media, but that’s a low limbo bar to clear. Only 43% combine on great/fair responses, which according to Gallup’s graph, appears to be its lowest point in the series. All other age demos have combined great/fair confidence levels in the 20s, with the 30-49YO demo coming in at the bottom with 23%. Confidence levels declined in all demos over the past decade.

The overall trend line that results shows media trust falling at a sharp rate, with no sign of a plateau:

A record-low 28% of Americans trust the media a great deal or fair amount to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. pic.twitter.com/bwOyygz9JS

— Gallup (@Gallup) October 2, 2025

Gallup notes that this is the first time that combined great/fair confidence levels have broken through the 30% level. How low can it go? There is plenty more room to fall; the only demos that have majority levels of confidence are Democrats in the 65+ and 50-64YO demos, and they’re getting older every year. Younger Democrats are skeptical; confidence levels among 18-29YOs (38%) and 30-49YOs (42%) point to a bleak future — even for the Protection Racket Media’s target market for narrative amplification and curation. 

Can the media industry reverse this? Gallup notes the difficulty involved:

With confidence fractured along partisan and generational lines, the challenge for news organizations is not only to deliver fair and accurate reporting but also to regain credibility across an increasingly polarized and skeptical public.

We’ll have to wait to see whether the second condition can be addressed until the Protection Racket Media addresses the first condition. Wake us when the media starts offering fair and accurate reporting, and we’ll start deciding when skepticism has gone too far. 

Editor’s Note: The Protection Racket Media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.

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