9

Political Trust among Journalists:

Comparative Evidence from
21 Countries
Thomas Hanitzsch and Rosa Berganza

Political scientists often argue that political trust is critical to democracy.

Mishler and Rose (2001: 30), for instance, maintain that trust links ordinary
citizens to the institutions that are supposed to represent them, thereby
enhancing both the legitimacy and the effectiveness of democratic government. It comes as no surprise that this proposition has sparked a large array
of research on political trust, from David Eastons (1965) early study of political support to more recent endeavors to trace trust across various nations
(e.g. the World Values Survey), and to attempts to identify the sources of
trust (Campbell, 2004; Lhiste, 2006; Mishler and Rose, 2001). Empirical
evidence suggests a rather pessimistic outlook for many of the established
democracies, which show alarming signs of widespread public discontent
with politics and cynicism about government (Norris, 1999a). Mair (2006:
6) notes that [n]ever before in the history of postwar Europe have governments and their political leaders ... been held in such low regard.
In communication research, scholars are similarly concerned about the
erosion of confidence in political institutions, a process that is seen as a
serious issue in public opinion (Moy et al., 1999: 137). Due to the constant
decay of political trust, the media have been found to play a role considered
to be mostly detrimental to democracy by many researchers. It is especially
the persistent pattern of negativity in the news that has been identified as a
key factor in the rise of political distrust, with television news being particularly destructive in this respect (Cappella and Jamieson, 1997; Moy et al.,
1999; Patterson, 2000; Pfau and Moy, 1998). However, not all researchers
agree with such views. Norris (2000), for instance, makes the argument that
the media actually play a positive role in the process of building political
trust, thus playing an important part in a virtuous circle rather than a
vicious circle. Overall, it seems that media may actually foster citizen
involvement but only marginally contribute to cynicism (Newton, 1999;
Dalton, 2004; Schmitt-Beck and Voltmer, 2007).
137

M. J. Canel et al. (eds.), Comparing Political Communication across Time and Space
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2014

138 Thomas Hanitzsch and Rosa Berganza

If political trust is so critical to democracy, if the news media play an

important role in this process, and if there is a connection between journalists attitudes and practices, then it is all the more important to shift
our focus to journalists attitudes towards political institutions. Few studies
have attempted to explore this relationship in the European context (Brants
et al., 2010; van Aelst et al., 2008; Van Dalen et al., 2011; Hanitzsch and
Berganza, 2012). We argue that research should not stop at the investigation
of content but take into consideration the attitudes and beliefs of journalists. This chapter therefore intends to close this gap and asks the following
general research questions: How trusting are journalists of political institutions?; What are the determinants of journalists political trust on
the societal level?; and Do the journalists trust levels correspond to the
general publics political trust? These questions have been explored within
a larger cross-national survey project in which researchers in 21 countries
collected data about 2,100 journalists working in 413 news organizations.1 A
comparative analysis is especially valuable in this regard, for it allows for the
tracking of differential developments in various cultural contexts and the
identifying of the principal forces behind cross-national differences.

Political trust
Studies of trust in public institutions date back to David Eastons (1965)
groundbreaking study on political support, as well as Robert D. Putnams
(1993) work on political trust and its relation to democracy. Putnam argues
that the importance of trust is grounded in its reciprocal relationship with
cooperation: The greater the level of trust within a community, the greater
the likelihood of cooperation. And cooperation itself breeds trust (Putnam,
1993: 171). Theorists generally emphasize that trust is very much oriented
towards the future: to trust means to hold some expectations about how
another person will perform on some future occasion (Misztal, 1996).
Political trust is a specific form of institutional trust insofar as it refers
to the general publics confidence in political institutions, including the
government, parliament, and political parties. Institutional trust is the extent
to which the people are confident that public institutions will perform in a
satisfactory manner (Hudson, 2006). Trust is essentially a relational concept
that involves individuals judgments about the trustworthiness of institutions. These judgments, argues Grosskopf (2008), lead to corresponding
expectations that institutions will produce agreeable outcomes in the future,
which, in turn, influence the behavior and attitudes of individuals towards
these institutions (Grosskopf, 2008: 5). Because outcomes or intentions are
not always fully known to the public, trust involves confidence in institutions under conditions of risk.
There is no consensus about the principal factors that account for
differences in trust levels (Campbell, 2004). Two schools of thought have

Political Trust among Journalists

139

dominated the discussion so far: Cultural theories hypothesize that political

trust is exogenous and an extension of social (or interpersonal) trust, learned
early in life and, much later, projected onto public institutions (Hudson,
2006; Mishler and Rose, 2001). The more the people trust each other in a
given society, the more they trust in political institutions (Lhiste, 2006).
Institutional theories, on the other hand, argue that institutional trust is
politically endogenous; it is seen as a consequence, not a cause, of political performance (Mishler and Rose, 2001). From this performance-based
perspective, trust in institutions is rationally grounded: The more the people
believe that political institutions function in a satisfactory manner, the
higher their trust in these institutions (Lhiste, 2006). Among the aspects
of political performance that were found to be most relevant to public trust
are corruption and the general quality of democracy (Grosskopf, 2008;
Kotzian, 2011; Kunioka and Woller, 1999; Slomczynski and Janicka, 2009).
We added media freedom to this list (with reference to the Press Freedom
Index set up by the Freedom House (http://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/freedom-press-2014)) in order to explore if there is any relationship between levels of political trust and levels of press freedom in societies
studied. Journalists perceptions of political institutions may be shaped by
the degree of autonomy these institutions grant to the news media, which
would suggest that journalists in countries with a restricted press have less
trust in their political institutions than their colleagues who enjoy press
freedom.
By and large, empirical evidence speaks in favor of an institutional explanation of trust in political institutions (Campbell, 2004; Gronke and Cook,
2007; Lhiste, 2006; Mishler and Rose, 2001; Newton, 2006). Political and
economic performance, as well as the peoples satisfaction with a countrys
performance, are the major and most commonly referred to sources of trust
or distrust in political institutions (Grosskopf, 2008; McAllister, 1999; Miller
and Listhaug, 1999).

Journalists and political trust

Throughout the Western world, political scientists have found strong
evidence for a decline in public esteem for political institutions (Mair, 2006;
Norris, 1999a; Torcal and Montero, 2006). These signs of eroding trust are
commonly discussed in conjunction with alarming trends of widespread
cynicism about politics, public disengagement from conventional politics
and a depoliticization of policy making (Mair, 2002; Norris, 1999b).
Communication researchers prefer to speak of cynicism instead of trust.
Some scholars link negativity in the news to a spiral of cynicism (Capella
and Jamieson, 1997), a decrease in several forms of political participation and
engagement (Bennett, 2008; Patterson, 1994), as well as cynicism and negative evaluations of political institutions (Moy and Pfau, 2000; Rozell, 1996).

140 Thomas Hanitzsch and Rosa Berganza

While there is a massive amount of literature devoted to the understanding

of the medias influence on political participation, political knowledge and
evaluations, empirical evidence for the power of the media in this process is
ambiguous. Several studies found trends of negativity and cynicism in the
news media to be pervasive not only in the American context (Patterson,
2000; Pfau and Moy, 1998), but also throughout Europe (Brandenburg, 2005;
Lengauer and Vorhofer, 2010; Kepplinger, 1998; Plasser et al., 2009; Salgado,
2008). However, European research on negativity appears to be more fragmented and less uniform in its conclusions, since it reflects a greater diversity of political communication systems and research theories (Lengauer
et al., 2012). A number of studies have found negativity expressed by the
news media to be a major factor in the decline of political trust (Moy et al.,
1999), but van Dalen et al. (2011: 148) note that empirical evidence for a
causal relationship is still far from conclusive.
This chapter does not intend to make causal claims about the contribution of journalists to the erosion of political trust. We nonetheless think
that it is important and worthwhile to look into the attitudinal elements of
journalism and its professional ideology as a potential factor in the process.
One potential source of influence could stem from the professional ideology
of journalists acting as watchdogs and as the fourth estate of democracy
(Deuze, 2005; Gans, 1979; Schramm, 1964), or even as adversaries of the
government and politicians (Weaver et al., 2006). As relentless cross-examiners, watchdog journalists provide an independent and radical critique of
society and its institutions, and they are skeptical of, or even hostile to, every
assertion made by those who are in power (Fuller, 1996; McQuail, 2000).
This idea has traveled well beyond the United States and found empirical
manifestations in Europe (Preston and Metykova, 2009) and South America
(Waisbord, 2000). The question, however, is whether the watchdog orientation of journalists has a positive or a negative effect on political trust.
To the extent that watchdog journalism is about covering governmental
misconduct and political excess, journalists may express less political trust
in professional cultures that tend to be more critical and adversarial.
On a more general level, it does seem plausible to expect journalists to
be less trusting in political institutions than the general public. Journalists
often have privileged access to the world of politics; hence, they tend to be
much better informed about issues of dysfunctional politics than members of
the audience. At the same time, partly due to their above-average education
levels, journalists may also have a more sophisticated understanding of politics, which can actually lead to higher levels of political trust among them.
Overall, we now have three contextual factors which have the potential
to affect journalists political trust: social trust, performance and journalistic
ideology. Journalists may exhibit more political trust in societies that perform
better on political and economic outcomes and in which people tend to
trust each other more generally. Journalists may have less trust in political

Political Trust among Journalists

141

institutions, however, in professional cultures that place more emphasis on

watchdog journalism and adversarialism.

Methodology
Samples: The analysis reported in this article is based on 2,100 interviews
with working journalists in 21 countries (Hanitzsch and Berganza, 2012).2
Sampling was carried out in two steps. We first selected 20 news organizations in each country following a stratified target sample. More specifically,
news organizations in each country were purposively sampled to represent
quality and popular media, as well as state and local media. Thus, in each
country sample, there are ten national and 15 local journalists from quality
daily newspapers; five national and five local journalists from popular daily
newspapers; five national journalists from a quality weekly publication and
five from a popular weekly publication; five from a national news agency or
wire service; five each from a national and a local public television station;
15 national and five local journalists from a privately owned television
station; five each from a national and local public radio station; and five
each from a national and local privately owned radio station. Online newsrooms were omitted from the study, as the degree of their institutionalization still varied considerably across countries at the time the surveys were
conducted. Popular print media outlets were identified by circulation size,
and popular radio and broadcast programs were selected on the basis of
audience share for their broadcasts. Quality news outlets were identified
on the basis of their ability to influence the public agenda as determined
by common agreement among journalists and scholars in each country.
The research teams in each country tried to match the sampling frame for
the media outlets, but researchers in a few countries had to use alternative
sampling methods.
Wherever possible, we selected five journalists from each newsroom.
Since the total sample size in each country was 100 respondents, this study
does not claim to portray a representative picture of newspeople in the 21
nations. Rather, the various country samples were matched in terms of
their internal composition to allow for meaningful cross-country comparison. To this end, Hofstede (2001), for instance, suggests minimal samples
sizes of at least 20, preferably 50, respondents per country.
In order to capture the various domains of news work we selected respondents from the traditional hard news beats, as well as from other areas of
coverage such as sports, travel and celebrities. Within news organizations,
journalists were further stratified according to the extent of their editorial
responsibilities. Ideally, one journalist was selected from the top echelon
of the editorial hierarchy (e.g. chief editors and their deputies), one from
the middle level of operational decision-makers (e.g. senior editors and desk
heads), and three from the lowest level of the newsroom hierarchy (e.g.

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Thomas Hanitzsch and Rosa Berganza

reporters). The selection of journalists in each of these categories was based

on random sampling.
Questionnaire and Data Collection: The research tools used in this study
were collaboratively designed, with a fully standardized master questionnaire developed in English and then translated into the relevant languages.
Translation usually involved an iterative translation and back-translation
procedure or committees of bilingual experts in order to achieve the best
possible approximation to the original master questionnaire. Data collection
for the 21 countries took about 50 months and was completed in October
2011. Interviews were done by telephone in most countries. In Bulgaria,
China, Egypt, Indonesia and Mexico, at least some of the interviews were
conducted personally for cultural reasons. In Pakistan and Turkey, journalists completed questionnaires on their own while a researcher was present.
The enthusiasm of journalists and newsroom managers varied from case to
case and country to country, sometimes substantially. From the 413 newsrooms that were initially chosen, 28 refused to cooperate and were subsequently replaced. In terms of the journalists, from the 2,100 journalists
originally selected we had to substitute 266 interviewees, due to refusal to
participate.
Measures: Our measures for political trust were designed along the lines of
those used in international comparative surveys, most notably the European
Social Survey (ESS) and the World Values Survey (WVS). In the interview,
the question was introduced by the following sentence: Please tell me on a
scale of 1 to 5 how much you personally trust each of the following institutions. The respondents were then presented with a list of public institutions,
including the parliament, political parties, the government, as well as politicians in general. A combined index measure for political trust, consisting of
these four indicators, proved to be highly reliable (Cronbachs alpha = .81).
We obtained our measures of economic and political performance from
publicly available sources. As an indicator for economic performance we
used the 2008 Gross Domestic Product (GDP, at purchasing power parity per
capita, International Monetary Fund (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/
weo/2008/02/weodata/index.aspx)). For the analysis of group differences,
we applied the World Bank classification of high, middle and low-income
countries. From the GDP we calculated economic growth, indicated by the
total growth in GDP of a country between 2003 and 2008 in percent of its
2003 value.3
For political performance we used three measures: The Economist
Intelligence Units Index of Democracy is based on the ratings of 60 indicators grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political
culture.4 Media freedom is annually measured and published as part of
Freedom Houses Press Freedom Index series. The index is based on ratings
of 23 questions divided into three broad areas: legal, political and economic
environments (Karlekar, 2003). Countries are classified as either free,

Political Trust among Journalists

143

partly free or not free. Transparency International finally contributed

information of perceived levels of corruption. The Corruption Perceptions
Index is compiled annually; its 2008 version contains information from 11
independent institutions.5
Information about aggregate levels of social trust was obtained from the
website of the WVS.6 The journalistic watchdog orientation was measured
in the questionnaire on the basis of a five-point rating scale. We asked the
journalists to indicate the extent to which they consider themselves as
watchdogs of the government.7 The exact scores for each of these dimensions are documented in the Appendix.

Journalists political trust across nations

Table 9.1 indicates that journalists have generally little trust in political
parties and politicians. Overall mean scores of 2.19 and 2.23, on a scale
that ranges between 1 and 5, clearly indicate a rather cynical attitude on
the part of journalists towards political parties and politicians in general.
These low levels of trust, however, do not apply to the same extent to the
parliament and the government. In all investigated countries, journalists

Table 9.1 Journalists trust in public institutions across countries (mean scores and
SDs)

Parliament
Western countries
Australia
3.06
(.83)
Austria
3.46
(.78)
Germany
3.55
(.77)
Greece
2.76
(1.02)
Israel
2.86
(.82)
Portugal
3.21
(.84)
Spain
3.41
(.82)
Switzerland
3.46
(.81)
USA
2.82
(.79)

Political
parties

2.36
(.98)
2.30
(.73)
2.43
(.72)
2.09
(1.06)
2.24
(1.00)
2.22
(1.03)
2.04
(1.01)
2.56
(.73)
2.28
(.97)

Politicians
in general

Government

Political
trust
(index)

2.42
(.91)
2.57
(.66)
2.47
(.69)
2.19
(.88)
2.20
(.96)
2.33
(.96)
2.28
(.94)
2.62
(.78)
2.41
(.91)

3.02
(.92)
2.65
(.76)
3.35
(.77)
2.74
(1.04)
2.73
(1.01)
2.70
(.88)
3.25
(.87)
3.61
(.76)
2.46
(1.08)

2.71
(.75)
2.74
(.54)
2.95
(.53)
2.45
(.81)
2.52
(.76)
2.62
(.72)
2.75
(.67)
3.06
(.58)
2.48
(.76)
Continued

144 Thomas Hanitzsch and Rosa Berganza

Table 9.1

Continued

Parliament
Non-Western countries
Brazil
2.20
(.84)
Bulgaria
2.33
(.94)
Chile
3.00
(1.00)
China
3.69
(.80)
Egypt
2.81
(1.21)
Indonesia
2.46
(.73)
Mexico
2.19
(.97)
Pakistan
3.10
(1.15)
Romania
2.07
(1.06)
Russia
2.35
(.81)
Turkey
2.43
(1.16)
Uganda
2.88
(1.08)
Total
2.86
(1.04)
N
2057
F*
27.66**
Eta 2
.214

Political
parties

Politicians
in general

Government

Political
trust
(index)

1.96
(.79)
2.04
(1.10)
2.00
(.94)
3.38
(.94)
2.18
(1.07)
1.78
(.80)
1.78
(1.04)
2.35
(1.03)
1.83
(.99)
2.10
(1.03)
1.88
(.90)
2.32
(1.08)
2.19
(1.00)
2057
12.50**
.109

1.98
(.74)
2.04
(1.07)
2.13
(.85)
3.01
(.91)
2.65
(1.22)
1.77
(.80)
1.83
(1.01)
2.49
(1.05)
1.71
(.98)
2.34
(1.06)
1.66
(.87)
1.77
(.95)
2.23
(.98)
2060
14.45**
.124

2.73
(.84)
2.54
(1.05)
3.03
(1.01)
3.97
(.80)
2.76
(1.28)
2.68
(.74)
2.58
(1.10)
2.64
(1.15)
2.23
(1.04)
2.55
(.94)
1.72
(.96)
2.53
(1.11)
2.79
(1.07)
2052
22.99**
.185

2.22
(.61)
2.24
(.89)
2.54
(.70)
3.53
(.72)
2.60
(.98)
2.17
(.54)
2.10
(.83)
2.63
(.83)
1.96
(.91)
2.33
(.80)
1.94
(.78)
2.37
(.69)
2.52
(.83)
2077
25.12**
.196

Notes: * d.f. = 20; ** p < .001.

are generally more trusting of these two institutions than of politicians and
political parties. This pattern is remarkably consistent across the surveyed
nations with the exception of Turkey, where journalists have less trust in
the government than in political parties.
Table 9.1 also points to some notable variation in the journalists responses
from the countries studied. F-tests show that cross-national differences are
significant at p < .001 for all investigated political institutions. The notably
higher Eta2 values indicate that cultural diversity looms especially large with
respect to the parliament and the government. For these institutions, crossnational differences contribute at least 18.5 percent to the overall variance

Political Trust among Journalists

145

in the journalists responses. We found less cross-national variation in the

extent to which journalists trust in politicians and political parties. In other
words, there is more cross-national disagreement with respect to trust in
the parliament and the government than with regard to trust in politicians
and political parties. Taken as a whole, country differences account for
19.6 percent of the variation in journalists political trust, which is in any
case a strong indication of substantive cross-national differences.
Journalists in Western countries generally exhibit higher trust levels than
their colleagues in the non-Western world, but the pattern is a fairly uneven
one. Political trust is highest among journalists in Switzerland and Germany,
and it is lowest in Greece, Israel and the United States. Switzerland is often
referred to as a showcase of the kind and gentle consensus democracy that
usually breeds higher levels of democratic satisfaction (Lijphart, 1999: 293).
Journalists in the United States, on the other hand, appear to have fairly
little trust in the parliament, and even less in the government. This finding
resembles a pattern that has long been established in the US (Norris, 1999a).
Notably, American journalists are the most strongly oriented towards a
watchdog approach when compared to the other Western countries.
Journalists in developing countries and transitional societies exhibit
substantially lower levels of political trust, but the pattern is mixed, too.
Political trust tends to be higher in China, Egypt, Pakistan and Chile, while
it is lowest in Turkey, Romania and Mexico. A potential source of this variation relates to the differential impact of contextual conditions. Journalists,
just like the general public, may perceive the importance of the various
aspects of a countrys performance in different ways. Brazil, Bulgaria,
Indonesia, Mexico, and Romania perform quite reasonably in terms of
quality of democracy, but they tend to be weak on measures of corruption (see Appendix). There are, however, several cases that run counter to
expected results. In Egypt, Pakistan, and partly also in Uganda, journalists
seem to have a great deal of political trust despite their countries weak
performance on nearly all contextual indicators. Somewhat surprisingly,
Chinese journalists have a lot of confidence in their political institutions.
This finding correlates well with evidence from political science research,
according to which the high trust levels are heavily based on positive evaluations of institutional performance (Yang and Tang, 2010).
For reasons of space we are unable to discuss the specific reasons for the
higher or lower levels of journalists political trust in the investigated countries. However, the data allows us to establish a few general patterns. We
will discuss our results along the lines of the three explanations established
above: social trust, performance and journalistic ideology.
Social trust is strongly related to journalists levels of political trust. A
comparison of journalists in high-trust and low-trust societies reveals
a notable difference and a considerable effect of social trust on political
trust among journalists. Journalists in high-trust societies have much more

146

Thomas Hanitzsch and Rosa Berganza

confidence in political institutions than their colleagues in low-trust countries (M = 2.78; M = 2.36; t = 11.62; d.f. = 2075; p < .001; d = .52). Of all
contextual factors analyzed, social trust has the strongest impact on journalists trust levels. Figure 9.1 also shows a very strong relationship between
social and political trust at the country level.
Evidence for the institutional performance approach is mixed. Political trust
among journalists is higher in high-income societies (M = 2.65) than it is in
middle- and low-income countries (M = 2.33; M = 2.44). The differences are
significant, but the effect of GDP on trust is rather weak (F = 32.30; d.f. = 2;
p < .001; 2 = .03). The effect of growth is also fairly weak, but reversed.
Journalists confidence in political institutions is higher in societies with
weaker economic growth than in countries with stronger growth (M = 2.58;
M = 2.38; t = -5.25; d.f. = 2075; p < .001; d = .23). It has to be noted, though,
that there is an obvious interaction between GDP and growth. Societies
with higher GDP generally tend to have smaller economic growth.
Results for the relationship between quality of democracy and trust
indicate a non-linear effect. Journalists in full democracies (M = 2.72) are
more trusting in politics than their colleagues working in flawed democracies and hybrid regimes (M = 2.25; M = 2.32). Newspeople in authoritarian
regimes, however, appear to have the highest confidence in their political
institutions (M = 3.05; F = 84.37; d.f. = 3; p < .001; 2 = .11). Regarding
corruption, the relationship is more straightforward. Journalists have more
political trust in less corrupt societies, and the effect of corruption on trust

China
3.5

Political trust

Switzerland
Germany

3.0

Spain
Austria
Australia
Pakistan
Portugal
Egypt
Chile
Israel
United States
Uganda
Greece Russia
Bulgaria
Brazil
Indonesia
Mexico

2.5

2.0

Romania

Turkey

10

20

30

40

Social trust (World Values Survey)

Figure 9.1

Journalists political and social trust

50

60

Political Trust among Journalists

147

China
3.4
3.2
Switzerland
Germany

Political trust

3.0
2.8

Spain
Egypt

2.6

Pakistan

2.4

Russia

2.2

Greece

Uganda

Indonesia

Austria Australia

Portugal
Israel Chile
United States

Brazil
Mexico

Bulgaria

Romania Turkey

2.0
1.8
2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

6.0

7.0

8.0

9.0

Corruption Perceptions Index 2008 (Transparency International)

Figure 9.2 Journalists political trust and corruption (the higher the scores in the
Index, the better a country performs in combating corruption)

is of a considerable size (M = 2.71; M = 2.38; t = 9.25; d.f. = 2075; p < .001;

d = .41). Figure 9.2 also points to a substantive relationship between trust
and corruption. Finally, the results for press freedom strongly resemble the
pattern we found for democracy. As expected, journalists in societies with
a free press are more trusting in politics than their colleagues in partly free
media systems (M = 2.68; M = 2.20). However, their colleagues working in
media systems classified as not free by Freedom House have the most political trust (M = 2.82; F = 107.50; d.f. = 2; p < .001; 2 = .09).
There was little support in the data for the strong influence of journalistic ideology on trust. In fact, journalists had more political trust in
countries where the watchdog approach was strongly emphasized, while
their colleagues operating in professional cultures that put less stress on
a watchdog ideology were less confident in their political institutions
(M = 2.57; M = 2.46; t = 2.96; d.f. = 2075; p < .01). The effect of journalistic
ideology on trust was not substantive, however (d = .13).

Journalists and the general publics political trust

In the previous section, we established that journalists are generally rather
distrustful of political institutions, especially with respect to the politicians
and political parties. The question now is how do journalists levels of trust
compare to the trust levels of the general public? In order to establish a

148

Thomas Hanitzsch and Rosa Berganza

point of reference, we used data from the fourth (20052008) wave of the
World Values Survey (WVS), in which 14 of the 21 countries covered by our
study were included. For the purpose of comparison we omitted trust in
politicians from the composite index of political trust, as this indicator was
not measured in the WVS. The resulting measures turned out to be sufficiently consistent, with reliability analysis indicating a Cronbachs alpha of
.78 for our own measure, and a value of .85 for the WVS index.
Table 9.2 shows mixed results for the various countries. There were no
significant differences between journalists and the general publics levels
of political trust in Brazil, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, Spain, and the United
States. In Australia, Chile, Germany and Switzerland, journalists actually
exhibited higher trust levels than the general public a result similar to the
one found in the Dutch study (Brants et al., 2010). In the remaining countries, however, journalists seem to be more distrusting of political institutions than the general population. These differences are especially striking
for Turkey, Indonesia and China. In these countries, journalists have considerably less political trust than the general public.
Can these results be seen as evidence for journalists driving, or not driving,
public distrust and disaffection with politics? There is obviously no easy
answer. At face value, the answer would be yes for parts of the non-Western
world. Journalists in these countries constitute an intellectual elite of people

Table 9.2 Journalists and the general publics trust in political institutions
Journalists
Country

General public

Mean

Mean

Value

Western
Australia
Germany
Spain
Switzerland
USA

99
99
100
100
97

.45
.53
.48
.55
.38

1399
2026
1184
1211
1216

.40
.31
.44
.50
.38

.05
.22
.03
.06
.00

2.55*
10.09***
1.50
2.98**
.16

.28
1.21
.17
.36
.02

Non-Western
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Indonesia
Mexico
Romania
Russia
Turkey

100
99
99
96
100
100
99
99
97

.32
.33
.42
.67
.33
.30
.26
.33
.26

1493
981
990
1903
1959
1542
1722
1973
1319

.33
.32
.35
.75
.46
.35
.29
.36
.50

.01
.01
.07
.09
.13
.05
.02
.03
.24

.37
.37
2.87**
4.12***
6.17***
2.15*
1.04
1.16
8.52***

.04
.04
.33
.44
.75
.24
.11
.13
.99

Source: World Values Survey (www.worldvaluessurvey.org); ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05.

Political Trust among Journalists

149

who might have an inbuilt inclination to be critical and suspicious of political elites. In addition, in a climate of deceptive and restrictive information
policies of governments and state authorities, journalists may be generally
distrustful of political institutions. At the same time, journalists in these
countries have privileged access to information about political processes due
to the nature of their work. They are usually the first to become aware of, or
even take advantage of, political deficiencies and misconduct, but much of
this might not be exposed to the public due to restrictions of press freedom
and the interlocking of politics, the economy and the media.
The story, however, is obviously different for journalists in the western
hemisphere. In these countries, journalists were in fact either more trustful
of political institutions than the general population, or differences were not
significant. This may cast some doubt on the belief that journalists, in their
capacities as individuals, contribute to public distrust. As we pointed out
earlier, this issue remains unresolved in literature, with empirical results
not suggesting a consistent picture. It seems to us that the question of how
the media contribute to growing levels of public distrust should be asked
at the level of media routines. Perhaps, it is less the journalists personal
attitudes and beliefs that nourish public distrust, but the media logic that
emphasizes negativity as a journalistic value. However, there are alternative
explanations. Various studies have demonstrated that institutional trust
is positively associated with education (Gronke and Cook, 2007; Hudson,
2006). Since journalists tend to be better educated than the average member
of the population, they may have other, more subtle, perceptions of politics,
while judgments of the wider public strongly depend on media content. But
again, the issue of causality cannot be resolved by this essay. Addressing this
question would require a different research design and analytical strategy.

Conclusions
This analysis has shown that journalists have indeed little trust in political parties and politicians, which points to a generally cynical attitude in
journalists with regard to political actors. Low confidence in these political agents is a strikingly consistent phenomenon in all of the investigated
societies. The journalists levels of political trust vary considerably across
nations, however. Such differences have also been found with respect to
general publics (e.g. Kunioka and Woller, 1999; Mishler and Rose, 2001;
Slomczynski and Janicka, 2009). Overall, it seems that journalists in Western
nations exhibit somewhat higher political trust than their colleagues in the
non-Western world.
We found notable evidence for contextual factors shaping journalists
political trust. Of all factors investigated, social trust had the strongest influence on journalists trust levels. Hence, the cultural explanation of political
trust holds, at least in this analysis. The institutional performance approach

150 Thomas Hanitzsch and Rosa Berganza

was also supported. The prevalence of corruption in a society clearly had

a notable impact on journalists confidence in political institutions. The
impact of economic performance on trust, on the other hand, was rather
weak. The effects of GDP and growth seem to run in opposite directions,
which is not surprising since it is much easier to achieve strong economic
growth when a country starts out from a lower level of economic development. Furthermore, a countrys economic performance may not necessarily
feed into corresponding public awareness, which is why we think the public
perception of the national economic situation may be a key in this process.
The quality of democracy and the level of press freedom are important
determinants of journalists political trust, too. However, authoritarian politics and restrictions in media freedom do not necessarily correspond to low
levels of political trust; or perhaps they do, but in situations where journalists are not keen to express their dissatisfaction with political institutions.
Finally, the idea that political trust levels of journalists were influenced
by a professional watchdog ideology found relatively little support in our
analysis.
Much of the cross-national variation in the levels of political trust may
be related to the kinds of expectations journalists have of their political
institutions. Dalton (2004), for example, suggests that as a result of high
expectations, citizens are more easily disappointed with regard to politics,
as it has become more difficult to satisfy their desires. The perhaps high
expectations of political institutions shown by American journalists, for
instance, may have caused them to be cynical, as their political institutions
were unable to live up to their expectations.
Another source of variation in journalists esteem for the political institutions may be related to differential perceptions of the importance of contextual factors. Corruption might be a major concern for journalists in Indonesia
despite the countrys fair performance on political and economic indicators.
Journalists in China, for instance, may care more about economic development than about quality of democracy. Moreover, the various contextual factors are related to one another in manifold empirical ways. Multiple
conditions interact, and when combined they may produce specific levels of
political trust. Future research should therefore invest more effort into larger
and more solid samples. In addition, alternative avenues of data analysis,
such as Qualitative Comparative Analysis, may help unravel the complex
nexus of interacting forces that shape political trust.
The generally cynical attitudes of journalists towards political institutions
should be a matter of concern, although not necessarily to the extent that
journalists are responsible for the publics growing distrust and disaffection
with politics. In none of the investigated Western countries did journalists
turn out to be less trusting in political institutions than the general public.
Journalists were in fact either more trustful than the general population, or
trust levels did not differ significantly. This does not necessarily mean that

Political Trust among Journalists

151

journalists personal attitudes do not contribute to public distrust. Since

they tend to be well educated, they might have more subtle perceptions of
politics yet still produce negative media coverage. This is especially likely
in the context of a media logic that is obsessed with negative news. Similar
or even greater distrust among the public may in fact be the grand effect of
negativity in the media.
In non-Western countries, however, journalists indeed exhibited significantly less political trust than the general public. One of the reasons might
be that journalists in these societies belong to a particular intellectual elite
that often operates in a dishonest and restrictive communication environment of official politics. In addition, journalists have premium access to
information about corruption, misgovernment and political nepotism, and
they tend to understand political structures better than the overall population. Consequently, a countrys political performance may exhibit a much
greater contribution to public distrust than journalists individual attitudes.
Journalists lack of political trust might therefore partly act as a mediating
factor in the development of public distrust.
Although we think this study has produced some important new insights,
we also need to be modest about potential generalizations resulting from
the studys results. We have investigated a sizable number of countries, but
our samples of journalists are neither large nor representative. This does
not mean, however, that these samples were insignificant. By holding many
crucial factors nearly constant (distributions of media types, ownership,
national versus local media, and editorial ranks), the selection of journalists
was extremely similar in terms of its internal composition. A second problem
relates to the fact that journalists trust levels, just as other subjective measures used for this analysis, are based on personal evaluations of individuals
who are not using an objective yardstick in order to make informed comparative judgments. High trust levels for some institutions may therefore only
reflect the mere fact that even in a context of generally little trust, these
institutions stand out in terms of their credibility not across countries, but
among the political institutions within the same country.
Furthermore, we believe that future research needs to address the relationship between journalists attitudes, media content and public trust
more vigorously by establishing causal links between the multiple elements
involved in the communication process: journalists, political actors,
media content, and public opinion. This would require a more sophisticated research design that taps into the journalists attitudes, the extent of
negativity their content exhibits, and the effects this negativity has on the
audiences trust in political institutions. And finally, the concept and true
meaning of political trust still deserves greater theoretical sophistication
despite a long tradition of research. Trust is a multifaceted concept that
needs to be disentangled from related notions, such as confidence, faith,
distrust, mistrust, skepticism and cynicism (Cook and Gronke, 2005).

37.36
65.04
40.94
92.25
37.12
40.66
27.66
38.02
61.38
64.61
49.87
34.24

Non-Western countries
Brazil
10,419
Bulgaria
13,187
Chile
15,363
China
6,185
Egypt
5,901
Indonesia
3,942
Mexico
14,218
Pakistan
2,690
Romania
12,633
Russia
15,939
Turkey
12,854
Uganda
1,225
7.38
7.02
7.89
3.04
3.89
6.34
6.78
4.46
7.06
4.48
5.69
5.03

9.09
8.49
8.82
8.13
7.48
8.05
8.45
9.15
8.22

Index of
Democracyb

3.5
3.8
6.9
3.6
2.8
2.6
3.6
2.5
3.8
2.1
4.6
2.6

8.7
8.1
7.9
4.7
6.1
6.1
6.5
9.0
7.3

Corruption
Perceptions
Indexc

42
33
30
84
59
54
51
66
44
78
51
53

21
21
16
27
28
14
23
13
17

Press
freedomd

Political performance

9.4
22.2
12.6
52.3
18.5
42.5
15.6
(30.8)
20.3
26.2
4.9
(7.6)

(46.1)
33.9
36.8
(23.7)
(23.5)
(10.0)
20.0
53.9
39.3

People can
be trustede

Social trust

4.45
3.93
3.80
4.21
4.79
4.20
3.90
4.11
3.35
3.56
4.35
4.43

4.07
4.21
4.33
4.03
3.38
3.80
3.71
3.77
4.39

Importance
of watchdog
journalismf

Journalism

Notes: a International Monetary Fund, 2008; b Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008; c Transparency International, 2008; d Freedom House, 2008,
original scale retained: higher values indicate less press freedom; e World Values Survey, 20052008, percentages of respondents saying Most people
can be trusted (in parentheses: data from 19992001); f Importance of acting as watchdog of the government, respondents mean scores; scale:
1 = not important at all ... 5 = extremely important.

25.11
27.80
27.78
27.43
33.30
19.05
22.80
27.98
22.38

Economic growth
(5 years, % of
GDP as of 2003)a

38,323
39,874
35,678
28,817
28,977
23,158
30,654
43,310
46,901

Western countries
Australia
Austria
Germany
Greece
Israel
Portugal
Spain
Switzerland
USA

GDP (PPP
per capita, in
intl Dollar)a

Economic performance

Institutional trust and performance

Appendix

Political Trust among Journalists

153

Notes
1. We would like to express our gratitude to following colleagues who have organized
field research in the various countries: Maria Anikina, Moscow State University,
Russia; Incilay Cangoz, Anadolu University, Turkey; Mihai Coman, University of
Bucharest, Romania; Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou, University of Thessaloniki, Greece;
Basyouni Hamada, Cairo University, Egypt; Folker Hanusch, University of the
Sunshine Coast, Australia; Maria Elena Hernandez, Universidad de Guadelajara,
Mexico; Christopher D. Karadjov, California State University, Long Beach, USA;
Claudia Mellado, Universidad Santiago de Chile; Sonia Virginia Moreira, Rio
de Janeiro State University, Brazil; Peter G. Mwesige, African Centre for Media
Excellence, Uganda; Rui Novais, University of Porto, Portugal; Patrick Lee Plaisance,
Colorado State University, USA; Jyotika Ramaprasad, University of Miami, USA;
Zvi Reich, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel; Josef Seethaler, Austrian
Academy of Science, Austria; Elizabeth A. Skewes, University of Colorado, Boulder,
USA; Dani Vardiansyah Noor, Universitas Indonusa Esa Unggul, Indonesia; and
Kee Wang Yuen, United International College, China.
2. This study was funded by several institutions, including the German Research
Foundation, Swiss National Science Foundation, Rothschild-Caesarea School
of Communication at Tel Aviv University and School of Journalism and
Communication at the University of Queensland.
3. The threshold between strong and weak growth was set to 40 percent. This decision was made by drawing on the empirical distribution of associated values across
countries.
4. The higher a country scores in the index, the better it is believed to perform in
terms of democracy; see http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%20
2008.pdf.
5. The higher a country scores in the index, the better it performs in combating corruption; see http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2008.
We considered a country score of .6 or less to indicate strong corruption.
6. See http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org. Question wording: Generally speaking,
would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful
in dealing with people? Scale: 1 = Most people can be trusted and 2 = Cant
be too careful. For the analysis of group differences, a low-trust society is one
in which less than 30 percent of the respondents said that most people could be
trusted.
7. Question wording: The following list describes some of the things the news media
do, or try to do. Please tell me on a scale of 1 to 5, how important is each of these
things in your work? Scale: 1 = not important at all to 5 = extremely important.
The threshold between a strong and a weak watchdog orientation was set to
4.0.

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