FROM JEFF CHILDERS

Axios led with this remarkable statistic: According to the most recent Gallup poll
only a paltry 28% of Americans say they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media, which is down from a solid 68% in 1972. That figure has never in history fallen below 30%.

And as you can see from the chart, it’s gotten much worse since the pandemic, with conservatives’ trust in media plummeting from 50% to only 8%. The percentage of Republicans who have “no trust at all” has also risen sharply over the past few years, from below 30% in 2015 to a supermajority of 62% in 2025.

Even among Democrats, over the past three years, trust in mass media has fallen by a whopping -19%.

It’s like they can’t help themselves. Axios —part of the media that everyone’s losing trust in— did not bother itself to offer any speculation about the cause of the media’s tragic downfall. It quoted no experts. It offered no personal interest anecdotes. It just reported the figures and stopped right there.

In Gallup’s report, the pollster drily noted (somehow without laughing), “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.”

Maybe —I’m just spitballing here— maybe it has something to do with the media’s instant fact-checking of pieces published whenever somebody calls New York Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani a “communist,” especially when they print the fact-check right next to a half dozen articles credulously quoting Democrats calling Trump a “nazi” and directly comparing him to Hitler.

But they won’t quit. Not even for self-preservation. They can’t, since there is no vaccine to cure their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Axios’ headline should have been: “TDS Tanks Trust in Traditional Media.”