Article 13 A MATTER OF TRUST A new Gallup Poll shows Americans have more confidence in TV news than print trust the nightly newsmagazines more than the network newscasts and the print news magazines believe CNNand don t rely on the Internet for news BY FRANK NEWPORT T AND LYDIA SAAD RADITIONAL NEWS MEDIA ARE BESIEGED BY SIGNIFICANT challenges Most recently the negative public reaction to this year s coverage of the Monica Lewinsky White House situation raised significant image and credibility issues Other challenges derive from longer term trends most importantly the rise of an astonishingly varied number of new sources of news and information including those that offer news at best indirectly and dressed up as entertainment and those that make no pretense of offering news at all but instead only provide unfiltered information As exhilarating as these challenges to the media might be the potential downside they present for journalists is enormously disquieting If Americans increasingly distrust the media get their news essentially by osmosis through talk shows and infotainment programming or get it directly from the source through C SPAN or the Internet the old style gatekeeper breed of journalist could be poised to follow the slide rule and buggy whip into oblivion New survey data however go a long way toward assuaging some of the fears held by the guardians of traditional media A recent Gallup poll shows that Americans continue to rely on and report faith in many of the traditional hard news sources they have long used for news and information Use of the new media as sources for news is much lower and so is trust in its accuracy There appears to be in short little evidence of a public backlash against the mainstream media based on their coverage of what has happened or at least what has been alleged to have happened in the White House and there is even less evidence that the public has mad a wholesale swing toward reliance on non traditional SOUms of news ENTY ONE SOURCES OF NEWS AND INFORMATION WERE by Gallup in its recent major assessment of the public s use and view of the media The survey of 1 009 Americans was conducted in March and has a plus orminus 3 percent margin of error It measured the frequency with which each news outlet is used by the public as a source of news and the perception of each source in terms of accuracy and objectivity The list ranges from hard news sources national newspapers network and local TV news local newspapers to media that straddle the line between news and information C SPAN and the Internet to media that blur the distinction between news and entertainment morning TV news shows talk radio and infotainment programs What the survey found Americans have generally high levels of trust in many of the major sources of news and information to which they are exposed but are quite discriminating and negative in their views of others Broadcast news has higher credibility than print Prime time TV newsmagazines are both popular and highly trusted as are local television newscasts And both are more trusted than the networks nightly newscasts The direct to the public information sources such as C SPAN and the Internet have yet to register much of an impression of any kind with the bulk of the American population Here are the key findings l The highest levels of trust are reserved for electronic news sources CNN public television news local television news and prime time TV newsmagazines All four of these have net trust trust minus distrust levels above 50 percent with about 70 percent Reprinted with permission from Amehn lournakm Review July August 1998 pp 30 33 0 1998 by the College Journakm of the University of Maryland at College Park of 79 2 COVERING NEWS of the public overafl saying they trust their accuracy compared to about 13 percent who say they don t Conspicuously missing from the top tier for perceived credibility is the nightly network news with a net trust rating of only 43 percent While cNN gets the highest trust ratings in the survey local TV newscasts would have to be viewed as the heavyweight champion on the list in that they receive high trust ratings and according to the survey are one of America s two most frequently used sources of news Other traditional news sources local and national newspapers and weekly news magazines rank significantly lower in terms of their perceived credibility with the national print news magazines coming in lowest of the group When Bill Clinton appeared on Arsenio Hall and MTV in 1992 to promote his presidential campaign he gave birth to a whole school of thought about the new media Oprah seRs hundreds of thousands of books Don Imus hosts a radio talk show based on a virtual Who s who of American politics the Walt Street Journal breaks stories on its Internet site Matt Drudge is sued because of the supposed negative impact of allegations published on his Web site and half hour infotainment shows dominate the pre prime time hours in most American TV markets None of this seems to matter These outlets are not used with any great frequency specifically as sources of news and information Despite its enormous potential the Internet has at best only a narrow niche audience that uses it for news Radio and TV talk shows and the infotainment shows do only slightly better Moreover all of these sources rate particularly low on trust In the case of talk shows and the infotainment programs the lack of credib Q is overwhelming Fifty percent or more of those with an opinion say they can t trust the accuracy of what they see or hear there On the Internet the can t trust figure is 45 percent Prime tune TV newsmagazines constitute a burgeoning source of news and information These shows will continue to metastasize until they are on every network every night of the week and eventually as some observers have noted may well replace the early evening network newscasts altogether The public could easily become reliant on these shows as their primary source of news and information which have among the highest levels of trust of any of the news sources tested And sure to rankle the editors of the more traditional print news magazines TV newsmagazines are now used much more frequently by the public than Tie Newsweek and U S News World Report Not only do the print news magazines get lower scores for accuracy than their distant cousins on TV but in fact they score among the lowest on trust l Dire to the nudience sources of news are