Title: How we evaluated Americans' trust in 30 news sources | Pew Research Center
Headings: Q&A: How Pew Research Center evaluated Americans’ trust in 30 news sources
Q&A: How Pew Research Center evaluated Americans’ trust in 30 news sources
The study examines public trust in 30 U.S. media outlets for political and election news. How did you choose these outlets? Why weren’t some well-known outlets included?
How did you measure Americans’ trust and distrust in these outlets?
How did you measure changes in trust over time?
The study refers to the audiences of different news outlets as “left-leaning,” “right-leaning” or “mixed.” How did you make these determinations? And are you saying that some of these outlets themselves are “left-leaning” or “right-leaning”?
Why does the study include more outlets with left-leaning audiences than right-leaning audiences?
What do you hope readers will take away from this study?

Content: For example, the new survey is representative of the total U.S. adult population, while the older survey was based only on web-using U.S. adults. And the questions asked, while similar, are not identical in all cases. But there are more points of continuity than differences, and we feel confident in the broad changes in trust and distrust that we’ve documented in the two studies. The study refers to the audiences of different news outlets as “left-leaning,” “right-leaning” or “mixed.” How did you make these determinations? And are you saying that some of these outlets themselves are “left-leaning” or “right-leaning”? “This study doesn’t make any determination about where news outlets themselves fall on the ideological spectrum based on either the content of their reporting, their self-identification or the views of their editorial boards.” I’ll answer the last question first because it’s a crucial point to understand. This study doesn’t make any determination about where news outlets themselves fall on the ideological spectrum based on either the content of their reporting, their self-identification or the views of their editorial boards. This project wasn’t designed to evaluate outlets themselves or the content they produce.