News They Don’t Hear: Why Americans Trust Local and State Governments More

Abstract

Many people hear less news about state and local governments than national government, and many trust state and local governments more. We propose different levels of trust are related to consumption of news, which may be more available and critical at the national than subnational level. We expect differential effects on trust associated with the level of government people report hearing the most about: a positive relationship with hearing most about local or state governments, and a negative relationship with hearing most about the national government. Using a nationally representative opinion sample, we find results consistent with these expectations. Further, people trusted state governments less in states where there were more news outlets, suggesting in places where news remains people may be less trusting. A survey experiment designed as another test of this: respondents were randomly assigned critical information about actions of elected officials at each level of government. The treatments substantially eroded trust in local and state governments, but not in the national government, where trust was already low. Trust in subnational governments may be higher than trust in the national government, in part, because more people hear less critical news about local and state politics than national politics.