Can Americans' Trust in Local News Be Trusted? The Emergence, Sources and Implications of the Local News Trust Advantage

Abstract

Despite eroding consensus about credible political news sources, much of the public still trusts local media. We assess the emergence, sources and implications of the trust advantage local news holds over national media. We argue the public now uses a news outlet's local orientation as a shortcut to assess its credibility. In survey experiments, we find unfamiliar news outlets are trusted more when they have a local cue in their name. In surveys where people evaluate digital sources covering their community, this heuristic leads the public to trust unreliable information providers that signal a local focus more than high-quality sources that do not. Our findings position local media as unique, broadly trusted communicators while also illustrating a logic behind recent efforts to disseminate biased political information by packaging it as local news. More broadly, we show the challenges that arise when the public applies once-reliable heuristics in changing political circumstances.