A new survey finds that Americans consider television and daily newspapers the most credible sources of news and information. Television was viewed as the most trusted media source, scoring a 6.6 on a one-to-10 credibility scale. Daily newspapers ranked second, earning 6.3 points out of 10.
The national study of 1,005 adults was conducted by Opinion Research Corporation’s CARAVAN® Services and sponsored by ARAnet, which provides content to newspapers and Web sites, including two-thirds of the nation’s top-100 daily newspapers.
Survey respondents assigned credibility scores ranging from one for “not at all credible” to 10 for “extremely credible” to seven types of media. The results of the survey were:
• Television: 6.6
• Daily newspaper: 6.3
• Radio: 6.0
• Online: 5.6
• Weekly community paper: 5.2
• Magazines: 4.6
• Free shopper: 3.5
The credibility scores corresponded with the amount of news and information people say they receive from each media source each month, with television and daily newspapers ranking as the top two sources.
Source: ARAnet