Hoosier Trusted Messengers: The faces and places Hoosiers trust

By Danielle Brown, Jasmine Snow, Jung-Hsiang (Eric) Hsieh, Jarrad Henderson

Our years of midwestern research points to one prominent conclusion: trust is hard to come by these days for everyone.

In our most recent  2026 Indiana-based survey report, we found that more than half of Indiana's residents said they either couldn’t name someone they trusted or they didn’t trust anyone at all. Still, we were able to identify key themes and important nuances about where, with whom, and how trust manifests throughout the state.

You can read more here about who Hoosiers trust, what they care about, and from where they get their news statewide in the News for Hoosiers: Community Priorities and Media Preferences Report. This report was made possible with funding from the Lumina Foundation and Michigan State University.

News in Indiana is trusted many unique social spaces. This includes digital arenas—like social media pages and encrypted chatrooms—as well as physical ones—like churches and community centers.

We found important identity-based differences when it comes to trust. Black and immigrant Hoosiers were more likely to name state and local politicians, as well as more liberal-leaning individuals and institutions.

These communities are also more likely to trust public figures and media makers who share identity markers like race/ethnicity, or those who have been outspoken in support of issues affecting their community.

You can read about Black and immigrant communities in previous updates.

Here are some of the most interesting things we found about who Hoosiers trust:

• Social media is popular, but trusted information pathways are concentrated in local journalism. Hoosiers invested trust in journalists, and they more often named local journalists and anchors than other news providers and content creators. These messengers typically had long roots in the community and high visibility in the community. Many prioritized relatable engagement efforts (like an active social media presence) and vocalized their passions, interests, and priorities. Multiple retired or newly independent reporters and anchors were named as current trusted messengers, suggesting that there is a longevity to trust gained that is resilient to location and platform changes.

• White, conservative Hoosiers identify “one-stop shops” for information. We found links between messengers’ prominence and what kinds of information or expertise audiences trusted them with. Several right-leaning trusted messengers were trusted across an array of topics, including public safety, health, and politics. Respondents also identified these kinds of individuals as fulfilling multiple roles, like both politicians and religious leaders. It is important to note these trends of offering certain figures broad authority were largely isolated to White conservatives. We did not see similar “multi-naming” among liberal-leaning Hoosiers, immigrants, or communities of color.

• 50% chance of rain? Hoosiers trust the weathercasters. A diverse mix of weather apps and channels (like The Weather Channel and AccuWeather), as well as local weathercasters, were named as trusted sources. This diversity within this category of trust was rare, and more exploration is needed to explore how and why trust manifests differently for weather.

Take a look at our map of some of the trusted local legends in journalism below: