Overall, the majority of Americans trust information coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the coronavirus. And an increasing number of Americans believe coverage of the coronavirus is overblown.
This according to new research from the Pew Research Center. The data was collected from more than 9,600 Americans in early June. Notably, before recent spikes in coronavirus cases in more than half of states.
Pew Research is a nonpartisan fact tank that compiles survey results and data on various topics. Their recent survey asked about trust in five entities: President Trump’s administration, the CDC, state government, local media, and news media in general.
“Republicans and Democrats disagree sharply on how often each of these five sources for news and information gets the facts about the coronavirus outbreak right. Majorities of Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party say the CDC and other health groups (76%), governors and state governments (62%), local news media (62%) and the national news media (60%) usually get the facts right. Just 9% of Democrats say this about Trump and his administration. It’s a different story among Republicans and Republican leaners: About half of Republicans (54%) say Trump and the White House get the facts right at least most of the time – about on par with how many say the same about the CDC (51%). Republicans are less likely to say the same of governors and state governments (45%), the local news media (38%) and the news media in general (25%).”
Also, when asked if the coronavirus outbreak “has been made a bigger deal than it really is”, an increasing number of both Democrats and Republicans say yes. In mid-April, roughly 29 percent of participants said yes, coverage of the pandemic was exaggerated, and at the time, about 57 percent of participants said they were following news coverage “very closely”.
In early June, about 38 percent say the coverage is overblown and only 39 percent of survey participants are following coronavirus news coverage “very closely”.
The June data was collected early in the month before several states began reporting sharp increases in cases.