Comment by efitz

There are several different things going on in that poll, but nothing specifically points at propaganda as a cause of loss of trust.

For public companies, the loss is likely just observable behavior - higher prices, worse service, etc. - and likely the root cause is poor incentive structure - incentivizing executives for short term profits over everything else.

For government, the largest factors are likely (1) the way COVID was handled and (2) the behavior of the US federal government since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Note that this is purely separate from trust in Trump himself, which is its own story but not in the poll. And Congress has always had extraordinarily low trust ratings, so no surprise there.

The press is interesting. Likely there is some propaganda aspect there (I have no data but half the country detests the "mainstream media", sometimes with good cause). But I think that the main issue is likely that many press outlets have come out as naked partisans in the last decade.

The main takeaway I got from this was that arguments from authority are going to be especially ineffective moving forward, no one is going to grant you credibility because of your position as government/press/scientist/doctor/whatever, because people have been abused too many times. And it will take decades to rebuild trust in existing institutions, and won't happen at all without significant transparency and reform.