Trust in media takes embarrassing hit. It involves brown cows and chocolate milk.

Americans today are more likely to believe brown cows produce chocolate milk than they were to believe the national media in 2016, according to two separate studies — one from the National Dairy Council and the other from the Media Insight Project.

Media Research Center's Mike Ciandella pointed out the embarrassing comparison Thursday on Twitter.

According to the National Dairy Council study, 7 percent of Americans think brown cows produce chocolate milk, the Washington Post reported Thursday. The 16.4 million Americans who believe that brown cows produce chocolate milk is roughly equal to the total population of Pennsylvania, the Post noted.

While that number is surprising, perhaps it's not as striking as when one compares it with the number of Americans who believed the media in 2016.

The Media Insight Project, which is a partnership between the Associated Press Non-partisan and Objective Research Organization at the University of Chicago and the American Press Institute, found last year that just 6 percent of Americans said they trust the media to tell the truth. According to Business Insider, Democrats were more likely than Republicans or independents to trust the media.

The Media Insight Project report said the majority of Americans see the media as being bias — or just flat out wrong altogether.

One of the latest examples of the media publishing known falsehoods came Wednesday night, when the New York Times published an editorial linking the 2011 Tucson, Ariziona, shooting, of former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Nev.) to a map that former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had previously released, which showed a target over Giffords' congressional district.

But many from both the left and right pointed out on social media that the Times' suggestion that the 2011 shooting was politically motivated was just wrong. Even MSNBC's Chris Hayes called the assertion "nuts."

The newspaper's editorial board has since released a correction in which it admits the mentally deranged 2011 shooter, Jared Loughner, did not carry out the shooting because of his politics.