Americans often prefer local news, yet its trustworthiness is debated. This paper investigates why this preference persists despite concerns about media credibility. We propose that people use a news outlet's local orientation as a shortcut for assessing quality. Using survey experiments and real-world polling data, we find two key patterns: unfamiliar outlets trusted more when they signal local focus; reliable sources sometimes distrusted less if lacking local cues. These findings highlight how the "local cue heuristic" maintains trust in media even amidst misinformation challenges. Critically, this advantage suggests why actors might package biased political content as community news to gain traction and spread misleading information under the guise of local reporting. Our analysis shows both the unique position of local journalism within public discourse and the risks when reliable heuristics meet unreliable providers or changing political contexts.
| Can Americans' Trust in Local News Be Trusted? The Emergence, Sources and Implications of the Local News Trust Advantage was authored by Erik Peterson, Joshua P. Darr, Maxwell B. Allamong and Michael Henderson. It was published by Wiley in AJPS in 2025. |
