Trusting News organization to receive 2026 Brown Democracy Medal

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Americans’ trust in news media fell to a record low in 2025, with just 28% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media to report the news accurately and fairly, according to Gallup’s annual Trust in Mass Media survey. 

This year’s Brown Democracy Medal from the McCourtney Institute for Democracy in the College of the Liberal Arts will go to an organization that’s giving newsrooms across the country the tools they need to regain that trust and deliver the news with transparency, engagement and humility. 

Trusting News formed in 2016 at the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute and became an independent nonprofit in 2024. The organization’s mission is to “inspire and empower journalists to evolve their practices in order to actively earn trust.” It does that by providing training and educational resources to journalists and newsrooms. 

Joy Mayer, Trusting News’ founder and executive director, spent 20 years working in newsrooms and serving on the journalism faculty at the University of Missouri. She started Trusting News because she felt frustrated about declining trust in the integrity of journalism, and curious about what journalists could learn about the concept of trust more broadly. 

“I grew up in an era of journalism where I could pretty much take for granted that even though journalism had its critics, people believed that we were on this side of good and we had an important role to play in society,” Mayer said. “And in 2014 and 2015, it felt like things were shifting and I was watching journalists get really frustrated by that and not really have any idea what to do about it.”

The team at Trusting News works with both for-profit and nonprofit newsrooms that produce journalism online, for broadcast and in print. Its partners include WNYC, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Texas Tribune. Trusting News has also advised WITF, Harrisburg’s public media station. WITF established a democracy beat in 2022 to provide information about how elections work and how misinformation spreads, rather than focusing solely on horse-race politics in its election coverage. 

Trusting News has produced more than a dozen Trust Kits, online lessons in English and Spanish for journalists and newsroom leaders on topics including asking for audience input, reporter mission statements, expert sourcing and elections coverage. There are also Trust Kits for journalism educators to use in the classroom that cover how students can earn trust with sources and how teachers can talk about journalism and the media, among other topics. 

“It is really confusing to try to consume news these days and it's rational for people to feel overwhelmed and stressed by that. They’re also not sure what is true and what is real,” Mayer said. “At Trusting News, we teach journalists to tell the story of their credibility and inject transparency into their work that explains how they make decisions and their ethical framework that is so often invisible to the public.”

This year marks the first time that the Brown Democracy Medal will be awarded to a media organization. Chris Beem, McCourtney Institute for Democracy managing director and research professor of political science, said the selection committee is pleased to recognize the important role that journalism plays in American democracy.

“We felt that this year was the time to give journalism its due and sought nominations of organizations doing innovative work in media,” Beem said. “Democracy depends on the fourth estate, and Trusting News is striving to make that role viable once again in American society.”

Like many aspects of American democracy, Mayer realizes that rebuilding lost trust in local news is not going to happen overnight. However, she is confident that the methods Trusting News has developed are effective and looks forward to reaching even more journalists and newsrooms thanks to the support from the Brown Democracy Medal. 

“It's really up to journalists to demonstrate not why the media overall is credible, but why their work is worthy of people's trust,” Mayer said. “I hope to make progress on that so that the public has clearer signals and can more easily determine what to trust.”

Mayer and Trusting News Assistant Director Lynn Walsh will visit University Park in the fall to accept the Brown Democracy Medal and present a public lecture on Trusting News and its work. They will also write a book that will be published by Cornell University Press.

Established in 2014, the Brown Democracy Medal is supported by Larry and Lynne Brown to recognize new and innovative scholarship or practice in democracy. Both are Penn State alumni, and Larry is chair of the McCourtney Institute’s Board of Visitors.

The award’s previous recipients include the States United Democracy Center, the Rendell Center for Civics and Civic Engagement and Invisible University for Ukraine.