Poll finds local news stands apart as trust in media fades

Let's switch gears here. A new poll finds Americans' faith in the media. It's fading, but there's one general exception, and that is local news. The survey from Medill's local news initiative comes right before the midterms. Joining us now is Associate Dean of Research at Medill, Professor Stephanie Edgerly. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. So tell us who was polled and how you came up with the results. It was just over 1,000 randomly sampled Americans. The poll was conducted by NORC, which is out of University of Chicago. And I think the big finding here is that Is that, you know, a majority of people have some trust at least in that the news will be reported accurately and fairly and coming out on top is local news. I guess that is a plus, right? At least for us. Understandably, because when you watch some of the networks, it's very clear in some ways where people may stand, right? Where people may swing and sway. Let's talk locally though. So only 32% express high confidence that the election results will be reported accurately. What concerns you most about those numbers, those findings heading into election day? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of that comes from narratives about voter fraud, about how much you can trust early results. And so I think for local news in particular, you want people to be able to turn on the television and understand the stakes of the election. And you want those results to have legitimacy. So that's where clear communication. From news organizations to viewers about what's happening, about what early results do and don't mean and about rules for calling races become really important. Were you able to determine What local news does that makes them more reliable? Not in this particular poll, but we've done a lot of research on that topic. And I think the leg up that local news has is its proximity to people's daily lives, right? There are clear connections to what's going on in people's neighborhoods, in their schools, in the city. And they can easily kind of cross check this with firsthand experience. And that's something that national news outlets just don't have the ability to do as well. What would you say local newsrooms should consider? Election Day, obviously happening in a few hours, essentially. What do you think that local news organizations should be doing to make sure they keep on the path of public trust when it comes to elections? I think clearly, explain and communicate how you are approaching delivering results from the election. I think that becomes key. And I think for everybody, we wanna have some patience on election night as results are coming out. We want things to be accurately communicated and we want the results to be told when they can be told, not necessarily first. We want them correct. Not first, so everybody should be patient in understanding that some races may take longer to call, some counties, some precincts may take longer to report their results and that's fine. We might not know definitive answers for a lot of election races, certainly in the country, but also in the county and in the city until maybe the next day or the next couple days. I mean, because you look at. polling, and we can't always trust that if we're talking about trust. But for example, in that Senate race there in Texas, it's 49%, 49% with each of the candidates. And so if it's that close on election day, you know that it's going to take a while really to get the results. I also noticed in the poll, you had it broke, the demographics were Republicans versus Democrats, and you found something unique among those two groups. Can you talk about that? Yeah, we did see that there was a clear divide in some questions, but not all of them. And there were big ones in whether you could trust the news accurately or in voter fraud. There was big differences, but there were not differences in other things, like how much Republicans or Democrats trusted. Social media influencers, online groups or social media companies or AI companies. So I think while we are all very familiar with partisan divides and trust, it was also very interesting to see where those divides existed, largely around news questions and where those divides did not exist, largely around new technology that both groups are equally skeptical of. Well, we appreciate you breaking down your results. We thank you so much for coming on. And I'm happy to know that, you know, the public is trusting somebody at this point. So that's a plus. Ms. Edgerly, thank you so much for your time today.