The most trusted news organization, and the only newspaper in the top five, was The Wall Street Journal with 57.7% of Americans trusting them, Simmons Research found.
Also performing well were the major television network news organizations, with ABC (55.9%), CBS (55.4%), and NBC (54.1%) ranking as the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th most trusted sources. Forbes was the most trusted magazine and rounded out the top five, trusted by 54.2% of Americans.
News Media Trust Index (Top 20 of 38)
| Rank | News Organization | % of Americans who trust this news organization |
| 1 | The Wall Street Journal | 57.7% |
| 2 | ABC News | 55.9% |
| 3 | CBS News | 55.4% |
| 4 | BBC News | 55.2% |
| 5 | Forbes | 54.2% |
| 6 | NBC News | 54.1% |
| 7 | The New York Times | 53.8% |
| 8 | The Washington Post | 53.6% |
| 9 | USA Today | 51.1% |
| 10 | The Washington Times | 50.0% |
| 11 | MSNBC | 47.4% |
| 12 | Reuters | 46.6% |
| 13 | Bloomberg | 46.3% |
| 14 | CNN | 46.1% |
| 15 | NPR | 45.1% |
| 16 | Chicago Tribune | 44.8% |
| 17 | Fox News | 44.7% |
| 18 | The Economist | 44.7% |
| 19 | LA Times | 42.9% |
| 20 | Huffington Post | 38.4% |
Among cable news, the most trusted network in the US was ironically not American. BBC News was trusted by 55.2% of Americans and was the fourth most trusted news source. CNN was fourth behind BBC News, MSNBC (47.4%), and Bloomberg (46.3%). Fox News came in 17th place, with just 44.7% of Americans trusting them.
The least trusted news sources were all Internet-first and hyper-partisan in nature (both liberal and conservative) representing brands that have been consistently rated as misleading and inaccurate by fact-checkers. The six organizations trusted least were split evenly between far-left and far-right news sources, and on average were trusted by only about one in four Americans.
Thirteen percent of Americans found none of these news sources to be trustworthy. This segment of consumers, identified by Simmons as “doubters” seem to think all news is fake news. Interestingly, this group, while they were less likely to vote overall, voted heavily for Donald Trump (62.2% Trump v. 27.8% Clinton).
SOURCE: Simmons Research, Matt Cumello, Senior Director, Marketing
press@simmonsresearch.com