A recent poll taken by the Associated Press has revealed that only 6% of news viewers actually trust the information being presented to them. Everyone is aware MSNBC essentially works for the Democrats and Fox News works for the Republicans, but these are also two of the highest rated news stations we have in this country. It is one thing to say you do not like the bias of a particular news station, it is another thing entirely to say political slants have completely corrupted your view of news altogether. It appears the petty actions from individuals on both sides of the political spectrum have left a sour taste in peoples mouths, 94% of them to be exact.
The research was compounded by a second study conducted by the Media Insight Project, a branch of the American Press Institute which set out to discover why people distrust the news and what factors contribute the low approval rating reflected by the AP. The study consisted of 2,014 individuals taken from the AmeriSpeak initiative, a self proclaimed “breakthrough panel-based research system” aimed at being representative of the overall United States population. The poll is estimated to have a marginal error rate of plus/minus 2.9% with a confidence level of 95%.
Though 94% of individuals claim they do not trust the news, nearly 40% of them could not specify a particular moment which made them lose faith in the industry – insinuating their opinions have slowly formulated over time. According to the results the most pertinent areas that media outlets need to improve on to regain the trust of their viewers is as following:
- 85% of people say the media has to get their facts right. Too often on these 24 hour a day networks news stations are putting on ‘talking heads’ and pundits fill air time and entertain. These individuals often have charismatic personalities and over inflated egos, more show then they are substance. People decry that the constant need to keep people entertained comes at dire cost to actual journalism and reporting.
- 76% of people say the news needs to be up to date. Again, in a world of 24 hour news cycles there is no excuse to be re-printing information from days, weeks, months ago. Pertinent and up to date news is critical for people to trust in the news source they are using.
- 72% of people say there needs to be less talking and more reporting. People turn on the news….to listen and learn about the news. Media in general needs less opinion and more facts.
- 63% of people say there needs to be less advertisements/commercials, especially on cyber news sources. Ever go to CNN.com only to hear some random video start blaring on your speakers as soon as you enter, or go to Forbes.com only to find you have to redirect from an advertisement to actually enter the site? This is exactly what people hate about trying to find news online.
- 79% of people say that when a news source publishes a political piece, they need to present more data to back up what they are presenting. Again, opinion is not news and if you are going to present it as such at least give specific details and facts to back it up.
In good news for AnonHQ and tech geeks in general, the study found that “66 percent of Americans report that they get news of any type from a computer and 63 percent from a smartphone.” More specifically, 87% of people report that Facebook is one of their primary sources for receiving news on a daily basis, though only 12% of these people “say they trust news and information from that source.” In an interesting twist, 70% of people say they trust the content of a Facebook article so long as it comes from the original source, not a re-post and the there is a direct correlation between the number of likes a particular article gets and the trust people will have in it.
Read The Study For Yourself: https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/trust-news/
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