Only 1 in 4 Americans trust their newspaper and TV News for the truth, can you blame them?
Trust in newspapers declines
The latest Gallup Poll shows readers are losing confidence in journalists, newspapers and the TV news reports, which partly explains why newspaper sales are falling especially among the young.
With so many internet based sources people can cross check the reports in the papers or on TV with the facts.
The CBC, Guardian and Standard Broadcasting are fighting back against these results by blocking internet journalists like NJN Network from reporting the news.
“The percentage of Americans saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers has been generally trending downward since 1979, when it reached a high of 51%,” reports Gallup.
That puts the journalists from newspapers and TV on the same trust level as politicians, lawyers and used car salesmen.
The only people who really read the newspapers faithfully are seniors.
Americans confidence in newspapers
“Newspapers rank near the bottom on a list of 16 societal institutions Gallup measured in a June 1-4 survey. Television news is tied with newspapers on the list, with 23% of Americans also expressing confidence in it. That is up slightly from the all-time low of 21% found last year. The only institutions television news and newspapers beat out this year are big business, organized labor, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs), and Congress.”
“Americans’ confidence in television news was highest, at 46%, in 1993, when Gallup first asked about it. The question does not indicate the specific type of television news, meaning respondents could be thinking about anything ranging from cable news channels to local news when answering the survey.” Gallup.
Bottom Line
“Americans’ confidence in newspapers and television news has been slowly eroding for many years, worsening further since 2007. By that point, newspapers and television news had been struggling for years to figure out how to adjust their strategy for a growing Internet audience.
It was also around that time that social networking sites truly began to proliferate, causing news outlets and journalists to work to find their place on them and serving to expand the role of citizen media and user-generated content. Twitter had launched in 2006, and by 2007-2008 was growing its audience rapidly. Facebook had reached 30 million users by mid-2007 and more than 100 million by the end of 2008.
These and other social sites and the Internet in general, as well as the 24/7 television news cycle, have challenged traditional media outlets and brought new ones to the fore, creating an increasingly complex — and sometimes messy — news environment. While individual news consumers have better access to news and to journalists than ever before, the struggles of the news industry seem to be affecting Americans’ confidence in it.
Additionally, the increasingly partisan nature of cable news in particular could be related to Americans’ declining confidence in television news specifically, with confidence dropping among conservatives, moderates, and liberals since the early 2000s. Conservatives seem to be most critical not only of television news, but also of the mass media in general, according to a different Gallup survey.”
For the complete story with all the charts, see Gallup.
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