An island of trust: public broadcasting in the United States

This contribution aims to better understand the level of and reasons for the trust U.S. television viewers place in the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) amidst what is often perceived as a general decline in trust in U.S. media and public institutions. Based on a nationwide survey of 1533 self-declared PBS viewers and rooted in theories of the conceptualization of organizational trust, our findings suggest that PBS viewers trust PBS along three vectors: institution-based trust (value for public dollars); characteristics-based trust (news and children’s programming); and process-based trust (nostalgia). This trust, notably for news and political programming, is shared by viewers across the political spectrum. We argue this unique multi-faceted foundation of trust, media, and politics can be the basis for a rehabilitated sense of trust in U.S. public institutions and can also be marshaled to justify the political sustainability and, even, amplification of U.S. public media.