Minnesota's Diverse Communities: News consumption and trust in the media

by KRISTINE LIAO and CRAIG HELMSTETTER | Oct. 11, 2021

Trust in the media is exceptionally low in the United States. Among 46 countries surveyed, the U.S. ranks last in media trust, at 29%, according to the annual digital news report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

While the study found an improvement in trust in nearly all surveyed countries this year, Americans’ trust in the news media remained at the same low level. The country’s political polarization, the rise of misinformation, and the prevailing “fake news” rhetoric are all contributing factors to Americans’ lack of trust in the media. 

In this article, we look at responses from the Minnesota’s Diverse Communities survey, which asked respondents how they perceive and use the state’s news media. Below are some key findings on Minnesotans’ trust in local news coverage and views on how well they cover different racial and ethnic groups.

Minnesotans’ trust in the state’s news media

Slightly less than half of Minnesotans trust the state’s news media to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time,” while nearly 20% of Minnesotans “never” trust the news media. When compared to trust in other institutions, Minnesotans have less faith in news media than in the state’s medical system, police or public schools. Trust in news media is roughly equivalent to Minnesotans’ trust in the state government.

BIPOC Minnesotans (58%) are more likely than White Minnesotans (43%) to trust the news media. White Minnesotans have the lowest trust among all racial and ethnic groups: One in five say they “never” trust the news media to do what is right—more than double the proportion of other racial or ethnic groups besides Indigenous adults. Among BIPOC groups, non-Hmong Asian Minnesotans (65%) have the highest trust while Indigenous (45%) and Hmong (49%) Minnesotans have the lowest. 

When looking at breakdowns by race and gender, there is a big gap between how Black men and Black women feel toward news media in Minnesota: Black men (68%) are more than 20 percentage points more likely to trust the media than are Black women (46%). 

The starkest difference in news media trust identified by the survey is among political affiliations. A strong majority of Democrats (68%) trust the news media while only 16% of Republicans and 30% of Independents feel the same way. More than one-third of Republicans and one-quarter of Independents “never” trust the media, whereas only 5% of Democrats have the same lack of faith in the institution. 

Besides politics and race, the survey also identified differences based on education level, immigrant status, residence location and family status. 

• A majority of college graduates (57%) have faith in the media to do what is right, but the same cannot be said for those who finished some college (35%) and those who graduated high school or less (44%).

• Among immigrants, 58% trust the news media—14 percentage points higher than Minnesotans who are neither immigrants nor have at least one immigrant parent.

• Minnesotans who live in the Twin Cities area (53%) are more likely to trust the media than those who live in Greater Minnesota (37%).

• And finally, Minnesotans with a child at home (37%) have significantly lower trust in the media than those who do not have a child at home (50%).

Local news coverage of Minnesota’s racial and ethnic groups

Besides gauging trust, the survey also asked Minnesotans how they feel about the local news coverage of their racial or ethnic group. Nearly one-third of respondents said they “have not seen enough news stories” about their race or ethnicity to make a judgement. A similar amount said “there is a good balance of negative and positive stories” specific to their racial or ethnic group. One-quarter of respondents responded “there are too many negative or ‘bad news’ stories” about people of their background, while 10% believe “there are too many positive or ‘good news’ stories.”

There are big differences between how Minnesotans of varying backgrounds perceive local news coverage of their race or ethnicity. Among Black Minnesotans, nearly 60% believe there’s an excess of negative coverage of their racial group. They are the only group in the survey to have a majority respond this way. Although much less likely than Black Minnesotans, Indigenous (29%) and White (24%) Minnesotans are more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to believe people of their background receive an excess of negative news coverage.

Besides Black Minnesotans, all BIPOC groups in the survey had a majority of respondents say they “have not seen enough news stories” about their race or ethnicity to judge the local news coverage. Two-thirds of Latinx Minnesotans responded this way, while more than half of Indigenous, Hmong and other Asian Minnesotans also said they have not seen enough coverage of their racial and ethnic backgrounds.

White Minnesotans (12%) stand out as the only group to have more than 10% say that “there are too many positive or ‘good news’ stories” about their race. This is significantly higher than the 4% of BIPOC Minnesotans who feel the same way. A plurality of White Minnesotans (34%) believe “there is a good balance of negative and positive stories” about their race.

When looking at breakdowns by race and gender, the perceptions of Black men and Black women differ greatly. While three-quarters of Black women in Minnesota believe there is too much negative coverage of their race, less than half of Black men in the state feel the same way. Black men are much more likely than Black women to believe there is either a good balance of stories, or that they have not seen enough news about Black Minnesotans to make a judgement.

Note that these patterns broadly reflect the results of a 2019 survey of Minnesota-based journalists: The results of that survey suggested that the Minnesota news media tends to over-represent White Minnesotans in a positive light, over-represent Black Minnesotans in a negative light, and under-represent Indigenous, Asian and Latinx Minnesotans.

Minnesotans’ primary sources of news

In an open-ended question, we asked respondents to list the outlets through which they consume news. The results show that many Minnesotans consume a mixture of local and national news. Respondents also covered a wide range in media type, including television, online, social media, radio, video, podcasts and more.

Television was the most mentioned news platform by a wide margin, with half of all Minnesotan adults indicating that they receive their news via TV. The internet is the second most mentioned news platform, mentioned by 25% of adults, followed by newspaper and radio, each mentioned by 14% of adults. Twelve percent of Minnesotan adults, however, indicated that they had no news source, either by leaving the answer blank or through explicit responses such as “nothing” or “[I] don’t watch news.”

Preferred news platforms vary somewhat by racial and ethnic group. Most notably a higher proportion of Asian adults, including both Hmong and non-Hmong Asians, mentioned that they got their news through the internet than via television. Asian and Latinx Minnesotans were somewhat more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to indicate that they did not have a preferred source of news.

Unlike all older age groups the internet is the platform of choice among Minnesotan adults age 18-29, mentioned by half of all respondents. Additionally, over one-quarter of younger adults were indicated that they had no primary news source, far higher than those age 30 or older.

In terms of news networks Fox and CNN tied as most mentioned by adult Minnesotans, followed closely by Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and WCCO. Fox, CNN and MPR were also the most mentioned sources by White Minnesotans, but different outlets were favored by other racial and ethnic groups. Fox, for example was not among the three most mentioned news outlets for any other group besides Hmong Minnesotans, but Fox9, the local Fox affiliate, was one of the most mentioned outlets by Latinx, Black and Indigenous Minnesotans.

CNN was the most mentioned news network by those age 18 to 29, MPR was the most common news source cited by those age 30 to 49, and Fox was mentioned most by those age 50 and older.

Fox was also the clear favorite among the state’s Republicans, mentioned by 18%. Thirteen percent of political independents, including those who don’t know their affiliation or don’t have a particular partisan leaning, mentioned Fox and WCCO—independents’ two most popular sources. Another 10% of independents mentioned Newsmax, which is double the proportion of Republicans who mentioned this right-leaning news source.

The three sources most common among Democrats were Minnesota Public Radio (14%), CNN (13%) and the Star Tribune (9%).

Since the internet was also commonly mentioned as a news source by survey respondents, we also coded specific internet platforms named by respondents. Mentions of search engines like Google and Yahoo were tied with mentions of mobile applications as the most mentioned internet-based news platforms, closely followed by mentions of Facebook and YouTube.

YouTube is a particularly common news source among Hmong Minnesotans. It was mentioned by 15% of Hmong adults through remarks like, “news in YouTube in Hmong language.” Note that while Hmong Minnesotans are more likely than other racial or ethnic groups represented in this survey to be immigrants, this does not necessarily mean that a large portion of immigrants rely on YouTube as a source of news. Similar to all Minnesotans, 30% of adult immigrants rely on the internet as a primary news source, including 7% who specifically report relying on YouTube.

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