Monday's PBS NewsHour spotlighted the low trust in the news media, according to the results of their latest poll. Only 30 percent of those surveyed by NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist trust the press "a good deal" or "a great amount." The Trump administration scored seven points better in the same poll. Guest Stuart Rothenberg bemoaned the "horrible trend" towards distrust of the media over the past several decades. NPR's Tamara Keith underlined that "these numbers are part of a very long trend of institutions losing trust from the American people; and that...puts America at risk."

Host Judy Woodruff zeroed on the media's poll numbers near the end of the segment with Rothenberg and Keith. She noted that "one of the things we looked at was...[the] high distrust of the news media." After outlining the numbers, she turned to Rothenberg and asserted that "the bottom line here, Stu, is that the media may be a good whipping boy."

The guest replied, "I think the public sees the media as a political institution — just as they see the White House, the President, and Congress." After pointing out the "horrible trend," Rothenberg pointed out "Gallup numbers in the early 1970s...[where] those of us in the media are regarded much worse than we were back then."

Keith responded to the poll results by citing Senator Ben Sasse, who recently lamented that "we are at risk of getting to a place where we don't have a shared set of public facts. A republic will not work if we don't have shared facts." She addded, "These numbers are part of a very long trend of institutions losing trust from the American people; and that...puts America at risk."

The transcript of the relevant portion of the Stuart Rothenberg/Tamara Keith segment from the July 3, 2017 edition of PBS NewsHour: