The Home Team debates whether nearly a decade of intensely polarized Trump coverage has damaged the credibility of America's news media. Trump entered presidential politics in June 2015, making the panel's nine-to-ten-year timeframe broadly accurate. Trump's early presidential coverage was unusually negative. Harvard's Shorenstein Center found 80% of evaluative coverage during his first 100 days was negative, compared with 57% for George W. Bush, 60% for Bill Clinton and 41% for Barack Obama. The larger issue is declining confidence in news institutions. Gallup found only 28% of Americans trusted mass media a great deal or fair amount in 2025, the lowest result since it began measuring media confidence more than five decades ago. Media trust is also deeply partisan. Gallup's 2025 survey found 51% of Democrats expressed confidence in mass media, compared with 27% of independents and just 8% of Republicans, illustrating how differently Americans now perceive the same institution.