Previous research showed that political trust declines when politicians debate in uncivil ways. This article extends this research by analyzing how the news media’s tendency to focus on and even overstate incivility in post-debate coverage affects political trust and the news media’s own credibility. The results of two preregistered survey experiments show that politicians’ use of incivility decreases their perceived trustworthiness. The effects of incivility-focused news coverage on politicians’ perceived trustworthiness are more mixed with one experiment revealing a negative effect and one revealing no significant effect. Both experiments furthermore show that incivility-focused coverage decreases the news media’s own credibility.

先前的研究表明，当政客以不文明的方式进行辩论时，政治信任会下降。本文通过分析新闻媒体在辩论后报道中关注甚至夸大不文明行为的倾向如何影响政治信任和新闻媒体自身的可信度来扩展这项研究。两项预先登记的调查实验的结果表明，政客使用不文明行为会降低他们感知到的可信度。以不礼貌为重点的新闻报道对政客的可信度的影响更加复杂，一项实验显示出负面影响，另一项显示没有显着影响。这两个实验进一步表明，以不文明行为为重点的报道会降低新闻媒体自身的可信度。