The “Trust in Media” survey conducted by the BBC, Reuters and the Media Center released this week has something in it for almost anyone. I’ve written up one take at my Who Owns the Media Blog, where I conclude that it is a positive sign for diversity of content that there are no dominant, pervasive sources of news and information in the U.S., unlike some other democracies.
It found that the media were trusted a bit more than governments, Fox News was the most trusted medium in the U.S. Al Jazeera was most trusted in the Middle East and the BBC (surprise?) was most trusted globally. Blogs, says the report, are the least trusted form of news, with 25% of respondents finding them trustworthy.
But the report has some significant markers for looking down the road at where the business of the media is headed. On the one hand, few individual news Web site were cited by respondents as the source they trusted most. On the other hand, given the short time this media format has been around, the Web's inroads may be considered significant.
- No surprise, youth use online sources the most. Among all those surveyed over 10 countries, 19% of those 18 to 24 years old named an online source as the most trusted, compared to 3% of those 55-64 years. As significantly, 56% overall valued the opportunity to obtain news online. In the U.S. it was higher, at 60%.
- The young male audience, in particular, is moving away from television towards the Internet. Ten percent fewer young males, compared to the average, name television as their most important news source (46% as opposed to 56% overall); and 15 percent say the Internet is now their most important news source in an average week, compared to just 9 percent of respondents as a whole.
- In the U.S. as might be expected the important news source in a typical week is television, mentioned first by 50%. But the Internet, mentioned by 14%, has surpassed radio as a news sources (at 10%) and is only 7% lower than newspapers, at 21%.
- Fully 20 percent of American men name the Internet as their most important news source.
Figure 1:"I value the opportunity to get news using Internet/wireless technology"
Figure 1, taken from the study, shows the percentage of respondents overall who “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with the proposition “I value the opportunity to get news using Internet/wireless technology." The greatest disparity is in the age demographic, providing yet further data points that online information is already entrenched and will steadily encroach on older media formats as the population ages.
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