PBS News -- most trusted

In a recent poll by Public Policy Polling, PBS has by a good margin the highest trust ratings of any TV news. Fox News comes in with the second highest number who trust it, but it also has the highest number who distrust it.'

And, as would be expected, there is a very high correlation between political ideology and which news is trusted. Democrats trust everything but Fox. Republicans don't trust anything but Fox.

The poll results were tabulated with a "trust/distrust" ratio and the net difference in the two.

PBS 50 trust/30 distrust = + 20 net
NBC 41/41 = 0 net
CNN 40/43 = -2 net
Fox 42/46 = -4 net
CBS 46/43 = -7 net
ABC 35/43 = -12 net

It's interesting how this has changed in just one year. .

In 2009, a comparable poll show that a plurality of Americans said they trusted Fox News. Now a plurality of them don't. Conservatives have stayed much the same: 75% trusted it last year and 72% do this year. Moderate and liberals have both strongly increased their mistrust of Fox: from 48% to 60% for moderates and from 66% to 82% for liberals.

PBS was not included in the poll last year.

The three networks NBC, CBS, and ABC are all more trusted this year than last. NBC is the most trusted, breaking even this year with 41%/41% between trust and mistrust. MSNBC was not separated from the NBC network in the poll, and this may have been what gave it the advantage. All three have risen, compared with Fox News which has declined in trust over the past year.

It's encouraging that PBS comes in with the highest trust ratings, especially given that its audience share is probably lower than the others. I'd like to think that a majority of Americans actually listen to news and think critically about what they hear. But, if that were the case, would we have the Congress that has just been elected?

Ralph