Article by USA Facts: “It is often said of trust that it takes years to build and seconds to destroy. Is America’s federal data infrastructure experiencing those destructive seconds?
Americans are losing trust in the government as a source of information, according to the State of the Facts poll released today by USAFacts and AP/NORC. The percentage of people who said they trust information from federal agencies dropped from 18% in 2024 to 11% in 2026. The seven-point drop was the largest among 15 information sources.
Source: USAFacts, AP/NORC
In 2024, people reported trusting federal agencies about as much as national newspapers or cable news networks. Today, fewer people report “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of trust in federal agencies than in YouTube and social media.
The same poll illustrates just why we need that information. A 43% share of respondents attribute our country’s political division to “relying on different facts” about major problems as opposed to having different beliefs. Consider that — nearly half of Americans don’t actually think we disagree ideologically on certain political issues, just that we have different information.
So how does this polarized public want to determine fact from fiction? Put simply, data. Sixty percent say they are very likely to see information as factual if it is based in data, the number one driver of confidence…(More)”.
