A first-of-its-kind statewide poll found that three-quarters of California Democrats trust journalists to accurately cover the news, but an overwhelming majority of Republicans — 8 in 10 — have little to no trust in the news media.

Similarly, 84 percent of Republicans surveyed feel that coverage of President Donald Trump was too harsh, while 62 percent of Democrats said it wasn’t critical enough.

“It’s like the Democrats and Republicans are living in alternate universes when it comes to the news media,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies poll.

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East Bay DA launches alliance of ‘progressive prosecutors’ to lobby for criminal justice reforms It’s difficult to know what — beyond political polarization — to make of the results, some experts say, because the survey asked questions about “mass media” broadly, rather than about specific publications or stories. And because the questions hadn’t been asked before in a major statewide poll, the responses can’t be compared to past surveys.

“Without having any historical comparison, at this point it’s almost too hot a question to ask,” said Ken Doctor, a media critic who writes the “Newsonomics” column for the Nieman Journalism Lab.

Mary Walker, an independent voter from the East Bay who usually votes Republican, said she feels like news reporters attack Trump for everything he has tried to do. She said she gets her news mostly on the radio and online — and feels that it skews to the left.

“The media’s all controlled,” she said. “I don’t know if the Democratic Party controls the media or if the media controls the Democratic Party.”

Alvin Phan, a 23-year-old engineer from Sunnyvale who describes himself as politically liberal, doesn’t agree with Walker. He said he trusts the news he gets as long as it’s from a well-known source, rather than “a small website I’ve never heard of.”

The coverage of Trump’s presidency — and the president’s sharp attacks on the mainstream media — has made him see why the country needs a strong, independent press. “I think it actually made me understand the importance of journalism,” Phan said.

DiCamillo, a veteran California pollster, said he decided to put the trust question to Golden State voters after seeing a national Gallup survey last fall that found that 68 percent of Americans had little to no faith in how the news was reported, with just 32 percent saying they had a great deal or fair amount of trust in the reporting.

The new Berkeley IGS poll found Californians as a whole to be more likely to trust mass media, with 55 percent saying they had a great deal or fair amount of trust in what they hear on the radio, read online or watch on TV.

Republicans were also far more likely than Democrats to say that they had trouble determining whether news reports were “newsworthy” or “reliable.” Forty-eight percent said they weren’t able to discern that very well, while only 11 percent of Democrats said they struggled to determine which stories or sources to trust.

DiCamillo suspects that distinction might be related to the debate over “fake news” — a term Trump routinely uses to assail media reports that are critical of him or his administration. The new survey avoids the term, but it is all over the media.

“Republicans believe it’s a bigger deal,” he said, “and they have a tough time discerning what is reliable and what is not.”

The online survey of 1,000 California registered voters was conducted March 13-20 by the Institute of Governmental Studies in English and Spanish. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

Journalists shouldn’t feel too downcast after reading the results, Doctor said. He compared asking people their opinion about “mass media” — a bucket that now includes everything from NPR to local TV news to BuzzFeed — to asking if they like politicians, Doctor said.

Americans will almost invariably say they hate politicians, he said, but if you ask about their local assemblyman or congresswoman, they almost invariably give a more positive response.

The survey “doesn’t help us understand how and which media Californians trust or trust more than others,” Doctor said. “That’s the question that hangs in the air right now: Do you believe the factualness of what you’ve seeing?”

Ted Glasser, a professor emeritus of communication at Stanford University, said he found the survey questions to be too vague to be useful.

“I wouldn’t take it very seriously,” he said. “It tells us nothing about the Mercury News. It tells us nothing about Fox or CNN or the New York Times. I think you’d end up with very different response if you asked about particular stories in particular newsrooms.”