Which U.S. and international news organizations consistently ranked lowest in trust in 2024 poll results?

1. Tabloids and conspiracy outlets sat at the bottom

The YouGov-based ranking widely cited in 2024 places the National Enquirer far below mainstream outlets as the least-trusted source in the survey sample (net trust −44), and follow‑up reporting repeats that the Enquirer remained the least trusted in 2025’s repeat of the survey ^{[1] [7]}. Reporting that visualizes the YouGov/Reuters data also lists Infowars and Breitbart among the least trusted outlets in the same family of rankings, identifying them as consistent low performers relative to mainstream public broadcasters and legacy outlets ^{[2] [8]}.

2. How “least trusted” was measured in these polls

YouGov’s 2024 questions asked more than 2,000 U.S. adults whether they found each of roughly 50–52 outlets “very trustworthy,” “trustworthy,” “untrustworthy,” “very untrustworthy,” or neutral; pollsters reported net trust scores calculated from trust minus distrust percentages, which is how outlets like The Weather Channel (top) and National Enquirer (bottom) are juxtaposed ^[1]. The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report and its YouGov commissioning produced many of the outlet‑specific comparisons used by third‑party outlets visualizing trust across brands ^{[9] [10]}.

3. Not just a U.S. story — international context matters

The Reuters Institute’s work, which underpins many YouGov charts, frames this as part of a global pattern: overall news trust varies widely by country and audience, but in the U.S. the combination of political polarization and the prominence of partisan/fringe outlets has produced particularly low trust in specific brands and in national news overall ^{[9] [6]}. The Reuters data and commentators note that local TV and public broadcasters (e.g., BBC, PBS) rank higher in trust than many national commercial brands ^{[6] [1]}.

4. Major pollsters show low trust broadly, not just for a few outlets

Independent of outlet-by-outlet YouGov measures, national polls from AP/NORC and Gallup reported broad concerns: roughly half of Americans were “extremely or very concerned” that news organizations would report inaccuracies in the 2024 election cycle (AP’s summary of an American Press Institute/AP‑NORC finding), and Gallup found media among the least‑trusted civic institutions by late 2024 ^{[4] [5]}. Those broad measures create a context where tabloid and fringe outlets — already vulnerable to distrust — score particularly poorly ^{[4] [5]}.

5. Partisan and demographic splits shape who is “least trusted”

Multiple sources show large partisan gaps: Democrats and Republicans disagree sharply about which outlets are trustworthy, and that polarization affects outlet rankings ^{[1] [5]}. Digital Content Next’s summary of Reuters/YouGov data highlights that highly visible cable outlets like Fox News and CNN also attract high distrust percentages among some groups (e.g., 43% distrust Fox News, 37% distrust CNN in one summary), underscoring that low trust is not confined to tabloid or fringe brands alone ^[11].

6. Limitations and what the sources don’t say

Available sources do not mention a single universally agreed list of “consistently lowest” outlets beyond the YouGov/Reuters sampling; different studies use different outlets, question wordings, timing and national samples, producing variation in which brands appear at the bottom from survey to survey ^{[1] [9]}. Also, while YouGov’s net trust scores put the National Enquirer at the bottom in 2024, other visualizations that use different samples or older data identify HuffPost or other niche sites as low scorers — showing results depend on methodology and the outlet universe sampled ^{[10] [2]}.

7. Bottom line for readers

In 2024 polling cited across the reporting you provided, the National Enquirer was the clear single lowest‑ranked outlet in the YouGov/Reuters‑based list (net −44), with Infowars and Breitbart also among the worst in related rankings; broader polls from AP and Gallup show that deep, generalized distrust in news makes fringe/tabloid brands especially susceptible to being ranked lowest ^{[1] [2] [4] [5]}. Different surveys and methods can produce different “bottom” lists, so readers should treat any single ranking as a snapshot tied to a specific sample and measurement approach ^{[1] [9]}.