The Wall Street Journal reports:
American institutions didn’t fare well in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, released Wednesday.
Of the 10 institutions listed on the poll – among them, large corporations, the national news media, and the Internal Revenue Service – only the military and the automobile industry received confidence marks of over 25%.
Two thirds of respondents – 67% — said they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in the military, by far the highest rating of any of the institutions included in the survey. But it’s not all good news for the military. Its number is down from 76% the last time the question was asked in the poll, in May 2012. And it marks an 18-point drop in confidence since January 2002, several months after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the reading stood at 85%.
...
Among the institutions with the lowest confidence ratings were social-networking websites, with a rating of 13%. Notably, this rating has decreased particularly among 18- to 34-year-olds. In 2012, 34% of that demographic said they were confident in social networking websites, while 31% had little or no confidence in them. In June’s poll, the confidence rating dropped 13 points to 21%, with 35% saying they had little or no confidence.
The financial industry’s rating dropped by 1 point since the 2012 poll, receiving an 11% rating this year. Health-insurance companies and the IRS tied for the lowest rating, at 10%. The health-insurance rating dropped by 3 points since last year’s poll. (The IRS wasn’t included in the poll last year.)
