Fact check: What are the most trusted news channels in the US?

1. What the documents actually claim — audiences, not trust

The supplied excerpts principally present viewership figures and ratings outcomes rather than attitudinal or credibility surveys, so the core factual claims are about audience size and ranking. One piece reports third-quarter 2025 cable news ratings and labels Fox News Channel as the leader in total television year to date with 3.3 million weekday primetime viewers, surpassing broadcast competitors ^[2]. Another piece focuses on the 2024–2025 broadcast evening news season and identifies ABC World News Tonight with David Muir as the most-watched newscast with 7.594 million total viewers, while NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News declined year over year ^[3]. A separate item appears to be a privacy policy or unrelated page and contains no substantive rating data ^[1].

2. Why viewership and trust are different conversations

The provided items supply robust numerical rankings for audience size, but they do not measure public confidence, perceived accuracy, or impartiality—core elements of “trust.” Ratings indicate what people watch, influenced by programming schedules, promotion, and viewing habits, whereas trust is measured by opinion research such as Gallup, Pew, or Reuters/Ipsos surveys. The absence of any survey instruments, methodology, or attitudinal questions in these texts means that no direct inference about “most trusted” outlets can be drawn from the viewership numbers alone ^{[2] [3]}.

3. Reconciling apparent contradictions in leadership across datasets

The documents show different leaders depending on the metric: Fox News Channel leads cable primetime viewership while ABC’s World News Tonight leads broadcast evening audiences. This is not a contradiction so much as a reflection of distinct audience segments and measurement windows—cable primetime versus broadcast evening newscasts—each with its own demography and viewing patterns. The reporting also notes year-over-year declines for some legacy evening newscasts, signaling audience shifts rather than changes in credibility or trustworthiness ^{[2] [3]}.

4. Limitations and missing information that matter for “trust” claims

Key missing elements prevent assessment of trust from these materials: there are no survey results, no cross-sectional demographic trust breakdowns, and no methodology for measuring credibility. The citations provided do not include poll question wording, sampling frames, or margins of error—critical for evaluating claims about public confidence. Additionally, the unrelated privacy-policy content in one file highlights source noise and the need to validate source relevance when attempting to answer trust-focused questions ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

5. How different stakeholders might use these numbers and why agendas matter

Broadcasters and advertisers emphasize ratings to justify ad rates and programming decisions, while advocacy groups and academics emphasize trust surveys to critique media performance. The cited viewership leadership could be highlighted by network PR as evidence of influence, whereas critics might point out that high viewership does not equal accuracy or impartiality. Readers should therefore treat audience figures as evidence of reach and market dominance, not evidence of public trust or journalistic quality ^{[2] [3]}.

6. Practical guidance: what evidence would answer “most trusted” correctly

To determine “most trusted” outlets one needs recent, representative surveys asking about confidence in news organizations, with transparent methodology and demographic breakdowns. Absent such data in the supplied texts, the claim cannot be verified here. The materials provided would remain useful for understanding which outlets have the largest viewership footprint in specified windows, but answering trust questions requires adding survey-based sources and comparing trust levels to audience size to see whether reach aligns with credibility ^{[2] [3]}.

7. Bottom line — what you can and cannot conclude from these excerpts

From the supplied items you can reliably conclude which networks led viewership in the cited periods—Fox on cable primetime and ABC’s World News Tonight on evening broadcast totals—and that some legacy evening newscasts experienced declines. You cannot conclude which news channels are “most trusted” because trust requires attitudinal survey data that these excerpts do not contain. Any statement equating ratings leadership with being “most trusted” would be unsupported by the provided evidence ^{[1] [2] [3]}.