Just 38% of Brits now believe what they read in newspapers, as the phone-hacking scandal that recently struck the Sunday tabloid News of the World has ‘corroded’ trust in the media, a study has claimed.
The study, commissioned by US TV network PBS and conducted by YouGov, found that Brits trusted dedicated news websites more than newspapers, with 55% of interviewees believing news sites were reliable sources.
However, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are yet to be regarded as reliable outlets for accurate stories, the study found.
Twitter, which has become a key supplier of news and information, particularly when breaking stories emerge, is regarded as trustworthy by just 15% of people.
Meanwhile, blogs are trusted by fewer than one in 10 (9%), the study indicated.
The findings come as the media industry is brought under the spotlight at the start of Lord Justice Leveson’s public inquiry into journalistic ethics.
According to the study, the controversy has had a dramatic impact on confidence in the British press with 58% of people claiming their faith in papers has been reduced since the first allegations emerged.
Around 51% of those polled said the furore had dented their trust in the media as a whole. In addition, three in four people, 74% feel outlets sometimes, or frequently, lie to their audiences.
The study revealed that the most trusted media outlets are television, deemed reliable by 64 percent of respondents, and radio, favoured by 58 percent people.
Nearly one in five, 17% of British adults claim they will refer to newspapers less frequently next year than they do now, the survey revealed.
Fifty-five-percent believed content in the UK had been ‘dumbed down’ in recent years.
The study that covered 1,108 British and 1,095 US adults.
US views on the media
The study also showed that Britons take a cynical view of the American media. Twenty-one-percent of adults said they never trust US journalism, regardless of the type of story being covered.
Americans, however, appeared more convinced by the British media, with only seven percent saying they never believe the information disseminated.
One in four Americans said their trust in UK media outlets had been eroded by the hacking revelations, which have been widely covered in the US.
In the US, newspapers are regarded as reliable by 44% of Americans, making them the most trusted source of news. TV and magazines are both trusted by 42% of Americans, followed by social media (19%) and blogs (18%).
PBS, the publicly funded American TV and radio network, launched in the UK at the start of November.
Its general manager for the UK, Richard Kingsbury, said: “It is salutary how public trust has been corroded across all media and yet encouraging that television still enjoys a high level of trust.”
Source: www.pbs.org
Follow Netimperative on Twitter
