A recent University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll found that traditional news sources rank among Americans’ most trusted sources. Conducted in November 2025, the Hawkeye Poll collected responses from 1,002 voting-age Americans across the country.

A part of this survey sought to understand how individuals trusted different media outlets and different methods of receiving news. Students collaborating on the survey looked to compare traditional sources and methods of receiving news and compare them against rising and modern sources such as social media and podcasts. To do this, a question was asked as follows: “How much do you trust the news when received from the following sources?”, and the options given were news reported from a local news source, news reported from a national news source, news shared by a news organization on social media, news shared by a podcast or YouTube video, news shared by a friend or influencer on social media, news shared by a public news source (NPR, PBS). Respondents were prompted to rank all six of them from most trusted to least trusted. 

Responses split the sources into two groups: trusted and not trusted. More than half of respondents ranked public news, local news, and national news within their top three, while podcasts/YouTube and information from friends or news organizations on social media were typically ranked in the bottom three by more than half of respondents.

Overall, respondents from both parties and independents all agreed that traditional news sources were more trustworthy than sources on social media platforms. Yet a notable partisan split was observed, with over twice as many self-identified Democrats choosing public media sources as their top choice compared to self-identified Republicans, who favored local news outlets. Other differences among party identification include Republicans’ higher trust in social media sources, with nearly twice as many ranking them among their top two sources as did so among Democrats.

The November 2025 Hawkeye Poll was conducted by the Department of Political Science. Students in the Hawkeye Poll course wrote and analyzed the questions on media sources. The Iowa Center for Social Science Innovation (CSSI) assisted with survey programming and data collection. The CSSI contracted with Verasight to field the survey to a demographically representative sample of about 1000 respondents via web panel. For more details, please see the associated press release and topline file. 

Isabelle Burgett, Rebecca Kenville, Christoph Letsche, Hunter Stevens, Molly Trotter, Amiya Welsh assisted with the preparation of this new story.