Posted on 05/04/2006 5:21:46 PM PDT by Howlin
One-quarter of consumers abandoned a news source over the past year because they lost trust in its reporting, according to a new survey that also found the BBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera the most trusted brands in their respective home regions.
Results of a poll of more than 10,000 adults in 10 countries by the British Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters Group Plc and The Media Center were released on Wednesday, with an additional finding that media worldwide were trusted by an average of 61 percent of respondents compared with 52 percent who said they trusted their governments.
"National TV is still the most trusted news source by a wide margin, although the Internet is gaining ground among the young," said Doug Miller, president of London-based research firm GlobeScan, which conducted the polling.
"The jury is still out on blogs," he added. "Just as many people distrust them as trust them."
The survey confirmed that media consumption is shifting online for younger generations, as 19 percent of those aged 18 to 24 named the Internet as their most important source of news compared with 9 percent overall.
Seventy-two percent of all respondents said they followed the news closely, including 67 percent of those 18 to 24 years old.
Asked to name the news source they most trusted, without any prompting, 59 percent of Egyptians said Al Jazeera, 52 percent of Brazilians said Rede Globo, 32 percent of Britons said the BBC, 22 percent of Germans said ARD and 11 percent of Americans said Fox News, each leading their respective nations.
The most trusted news brands globally were the BBC, Britain's publicly funded broadcaster, and CNN, which is owned by the world's biggest media conglomerate, Time Warner Inc..
Three Internet portals -- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft/MSN -- received the next highest trust ratings across the 10 countries, when respondents were prompted with 16 different brand names.
Although trust in media has grown in most countries over the past four years, the survey found, 28 percent of people across the 10 countries either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed with the statement: "In the past year I have stopped using a specific media source because it lost my trust."
Germans were unique in the survey for naming newspapers more than TV as their most important news source, by a margin of 45 percent to 30 percent.
Among South Koreans, who have a comparatively low trust of media in general, 34 percent said the Internet was their most important source of news compared with 9 percent worldwide.
More than 1,000 people were surveyed in March and April in each of the United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia and South Korea.
Reuters is a global news and information provider and The Media Center is a nonprofit think tank that researches media-related issues.
In America, the most trusted specific news sources mentioned without prompting include Fox News, mentioned by 11 percent, CNN (11 percent), ABC (4 percent), NBC (4 percent), National Public Radio (3 percent), CBS (3 percent), Microsoft/MSN (2 percent), USA Today (2 percent), New York Times (2 percent), CNN.com (1 percent), Time Magazine (1 percent), and friends/family (1 percent).
--- http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6331047.html?display=Breaking+News
According to the poll of news consumers in 10 countries, most of the world trusts their media more than the goverment (61% trust the media, while only 52% the goverment).
Not in the U.S., however, where 67% trusted the government compared with 59% who said they trusted the media. The UK government also got higher trust numbers (51% vs. 47%).
National TV got the highest trust numbers of any media on the planet at 82%; followed by newspapers, public radio, and international satellite TV.
Among U.S. respondents, the most trusted national media were Fox News and CNN, with 11% of respondents naming each, unprompted, as most trusted, followed by ABC (4%), NBC (4%), NPR (3%), CBS (3%), Microsoft/MSN (2%), USA Today (2%), New York Times (2%), CNN.com (1%), Time Magazine (1%), and friends/family (1%).
Blogs got the lowest scores for trust at 25%.
-- The United States
Americans’ most important news sources in a typical week are television (mentioned first by 50%), newspapers (21%), Internet (14%), and radio (10%). Fully 20 percent of American men name the Internet as their most important news source (second only to South Koreans in the survey). Americans (87%) are second only to Germans in preferring to check several sources of news rather than rely on just one — something that is correlated with the use of Internet news sources. When asked how much they trust different news sources, Americans give the highest trust ratings to local newspaper (81% a lot or some trust), friends and family (76%), national television (75%), national/regional newspapers (74%), and public broadcast radio (73%) and the lowest ratings to blogs (25%), international newspapers (52%), and news web sites on the Internet (55%).
The most trusted specific news sources mentioned without prompting by Americans include FOX News (mentioned by 11%), CNN (11%), ABC (4%), NBC (4%), National Public Radio (3%), CBS (3%), Microsoft/MSN (2%), USA Today (2%), New York Times (2%), CNN.com (1%), Time Magazine (1%), and friends/family (1%).
Attitudinally, Americans stand out from citizens of the other countries surveyed on a number of dimensions. They are the most critical of the news media’s reporting of all sides of a story; fully 69 percent disagree that the media does this. They are also significantly more inclined to disagree (46%) that the media reports news accurately; and more likely to agree (68%) that the media covers too many ‘bad news’ stories.
I agree that the Beep now is about as leftist as your average university/college "alternative" student newspaper. But the Poms disgress: they are still claiming that the BBC is very trustworthy "Look! It conducts audits to check its biases! It treats news seriously! You Americans' FOX news treat news as tabloid entertainments!" yada yada.
Sorry Poms, but to us outsiders it is not even the same Beeb of 15 years ago.
I fully trust Al Jazeera to be completely anti-American, ant-Christian, anti-Jewish and to pander to terrorists unfailingly.
Since I know that's the way they act, I can ignore them and concentrate on news sources that make some sort of attempt at fairness. Not that there are many of those.
Al Jazeera!? Trusted by Terrorists World Wide...and a whole gaggle of Liberals in the U.S.
WOW .. even Nixon had higher approval ratings then MSM
Al Jazeera, the network that always manages to magically acquire "authentic" tapes made by Bin Laden and videos of Americans getting beheaded.
Just knowing someone puts their #1 trust in Al Jazeera for their news source tells me all I need to know about that person.
Lots of anti-america leftists all over the UK and Europe.
They trust it because the know the BBC will always tell them what they want to hear.
You'll be happy to hear that there seems to be significant reform in store for the BBC.
Any Brits want to jump in here and expand on all the investigations and reform going on in regard to the BBC?
If one reads just 1 blog there is good reason to distrust it as a primary news source...but if one reads 100 blogs that are well chosen it is likely to be very much more reliable than most any other single source.
Well, yeah, but let's be fair; you can say exactly the same thing about the New York Times.
sounds like the world is fairly regionally chauvanistic
i know i sure am..lol
They trust it because the know the BBC will always tell them what they want to hear.
I think you nailed it. If the European press broke a story tomorrow about US involvement in a plan by space aliens to crash the Earth into Venus, Europeans would all go out and buy space helmets.
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