Matching national surveys with the dataset offered by the Worlds of Journalism Study network (2012–2016), this article presents an analysis of trust in the press covering 16 European countries and the United States. Drawing from the spatial proximity model of voter utility, this article focuses on the ideological proximity between journalists’ and citizens’ left-right positions as a determinant of trust in the press. We expect a positive relationship between these two variables. However, we also hypothesize that the strength of such relationship is mediated by the type of media model (according to Hallin and Mancini's classification) existing in the different countries. In particular, we expect a higher impact within those contexts where the level of political parallelism is higher. The statistical results are as expected. This article highlights that news media trust research should focus more thoroughly on the interaction and interrelation of news media, audience, and politics. The article brings also implications about the concept of political parallelism in journalism and how it is received by readers.

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The contemporary media environment represents the greatest challenge ever to journalism's legitimacy. Surveys conducted in different parts of the world highlight a decline in trust in news media. Due to the numerous changes in the news media environment, different investigative tools are required to grasp the mechanisms underlying news media trust from those adopted so far. This article provides a review of existing media trust research and argues that it is necessary to investigate news media trust (also) from a qualitative perspective because today understanding media trust is as crucial as measuring it.