Mechanisms of Trust: News Media in Democratic and Authoritarian Regimes

This study examines the relationship between the media and the government in authoritarian regimes and Western democracies, focusing on how political structures affect the level of trust between the public and the news media. Surprisingly, Jan Müller finds that there is a higher level of trust among citizens of authoritarian regimes. To help reassert trust in the media,  Müller argues that in democratic societies, a differentiated media system with interventions of the state to ensure plurality—in the form of public service media, for example—leads to trust in the news media.