Traditional Media Trusted More than Emerging Media

On average, consumers are four to six times more likely to feel that traditional media is more trustworthy than emerging news sources for news they feel is most interesting, according to a survey from LexisNexis.

Top pick news topics of interest (each selected by approximately a third of consumers) included entertainment, hobbies, weather, and food/cooking, according to the survey. Following closely was sports, selected by roughly two-in-ten consumers.

For entertainment, consumers most often picked traditional lifestyle media as the most trusted source Internet blogs, user groups and chat rooms were selected next most often, followed by weekly or monthly general interest and news magazines. Radio came next, with special interest or topic-specific Internet sites following to round out the top five.

And when consumers are faced with major events that significantly affect their lives, such as a pandemic or an ominous hurricane, their trust mostly remains with traditional media, such as professional journalists at mainstream newspapers, magazines, television and radio, versus emerging media sources created by citizen journalists including Internet-only publications, blogs and podcasts.

In the future, fifty-two percent of the consumers surveyed anticipate they will continue to mostly trust and rely on traditional news sources. However, thirty-five percent expect they will trust and rely on both emerging news and traditional news in the future, and thirteen percent anticipate they will trust and rely mostly on emerging media.