Sometimes you read a journal article and think, "Dammit, I should've done this study."  Such is the case in the latest issue of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, fresh in my mailbox today.  Even worse, the first two two authors are doctoral students.  Humbling.

What's it about?  To simplify, the dependent variables are political knowledge and political participation.  No big deal there.  These concepts have launched a million scholarly studies.  But what they did is so obvious, and the results so interesting, that it kinda ruins my day.  The study examines the difference between exposure to citizen journalism and professional journalism -- again, no biggie there -- but also trust in those media.  Best of all is a two-way interaction I'll discuss in a minute.

The basic result is this: after statistically controlling for other factors, exposure to traditional news was positively associated with political knowledge while citizen journalism exposure was negatively associated with knowledge. Knowledge in this case was an index of four standard political actor recognition items.  The results for offline and online participation are a little messier, so let's set them aside and focus just on knowledge. 

Here's the interesting bit.  While the exposure items line up pretty much like I'd expect them to (pro news positive, citizen news negative, in their association with knowledge), the authors also included trust in pro and amateur news.  The citizen news media trust measure was unrelated with knowledge, but trust in professional news media was negatively associated with knowledge. 

Let me say this again.  Exposure to pro news is a positive predictor of political knowledge, but trust in such media is a negative predictor.  This isn't terribly surprising, given that those who have the most to do with the news media tend to trust it less, largely because they are stakeholders or have been misquoted or know a lot about stories that journalists are forced to simplify, thus losing some of the nuances that come with any issue.

To clear this up, the authors examine a two-way interaction between the trust and exposure measures to find that among those high in trust of professional news media, exposure has no real effect on knowledge.  But, among those low in trust, as exposure increases, so does knowledge. In other words, exposure to news increases knowledge, but only for those who don't trust the news.  I'm not sure the discussion quite clears this up, and to be frank I need to think on it more myself before reaching some kind of conclusion as to what it all means.  But it is fascinating stuff.

Trusting The News

A quarter of Americans say they trust newspapers "a great deal" and only about 22 percent say they trust television news, according to a new Gallup poll.  But here's the interesting part.  Among 18-29 year olds, 49 percent say they trust newspapers.  Confidence drops as respondent age increases, which is weird.

How to (Maybe) Get it Wrong

My nearby metro newspaper, the AJC, has wrestled of late with declining circulation and a humbling move out of downtown Atlanta into the burbs.  The paper's top editor is quoted in a story here about how the AJC will try a CNN approach and skate down the middle of the partisan aisle in its coverage.

The Journal-Constitution asked readers what they want -- and made a big change. "What we found is they don't want us to be a newspaper with a strong point of view," says Julia Wallace, the newspaper's editor-in-chief. "But what they do want is, they want balance. If we have a view to the right, they want a balance of a view to the left. And they want us to be transparent about how we go about our work." 

So Julia, how's that working for 4th place CNN?

I'm of two minds here.  The hard news journalism guy in me applauds the approach and wonders what the hell you were doing before this that suddenly you've discovered balance.  But the journalism realist in me sees this approach failing.  Why fail?  Well, the little theorist and methodologist in me knows that what people say when they mean balance is they want a balance teetering toward their own preference.  You often find yourself reminding people that a lack of a conservative bias does not equal a liberal bias, but that's exactly what they'll perceive. People see what they want to see.

Then again, Fox is not fair and balanced, yet the slogan remains.  So maybe the AJC is taking the Fox approach.  Clever and sneaky, far too clever and sneaky to be true, but I could easily be wrong here (not on the success of this plan, but the motivation behind it).

It may very well be that advocacy journalism is the future.  Fact-based news, but told from a definite perspective.  At least for a while, until there is some kind of backlash and playing down the middle maybe makes a comeback in the public mind.  Whether anyone can stay afloat financially until this wonderful day, no one can say.

Who Do Ya Trust?

There's an interesting story here about who youth trust when it comes to science and climate change.  There's good news, there's bad news, and there's scary news.

Looking at respondents under the age of 35:

• Only about a third trust the news media when it comes to information about climate change.  That's the bad news from a journalism standpoint.
• But -- here's the good news -- fewer (about 27 percent) -- trust Sarah Palin on this issue.  So that's something.
• Eight out of ten in this age group trust scientists.  If there is an important number in this survey, this be the one.  Heartening, especially since this 82 percent is higher than any other age group.
• But there is scary bad news.  Among Evangelicals under 35, religious leaders are the most trusted source of information about climate change.  Huh?  Are these also the guys you go to for surgery?  For a wisdom tooth?  

A pdf of the entire report is here.  I may mine it for more blogs later, but as I'm on spring break, motivation is not high.

America's Most Trusted Name in News -- Fox News?

A survey reports that Fox News is the most trusted of the television news sources.

Our newest survey looking at perceptions of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News finds Fox as the only one that more people say they trust than distrust. 49% say they trust it to 37% who do not.

Not sure why MSNBC is excluded.  Or PBS.  Or Comedy Central with Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

For years CNN has run that "most trusted name in news" tagline so now I have to wonder whether they'll rethink it based on this survey.

But, the methodology says:

PPP conducted a national survey of 1,151 registered voters on January 18th and 19th. The survey’s margin of error is +/-2.8%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify.

Not sure why you'd want registered voters when asking about trust in news, since many people watch the news who are not registered voters.  Curious, or not so curious, given how "registered" voters tend to skew a bit toward more of a Fox News demographic.  Even so, in fairness, Fox is kicking butt so given its audience size you'd expect it to win this contest.  A better way would be to collapse all three broadcast networks and see how they stack up.

The actual news release, in annoying pdf format, is here. It's an automated poll, as you can see if you scroll down the pdf file I listed above, so the findings may unravel in a more traditional, systematic survey.  Also you find some interesting crosstabs.  Key points I found:

• CNN wins among moderates.  It also does better among women than men, but Fox beats 'em with both categories.
  
• Fox beats CNN among whites but not in any other racial/ethnic category.
• In the major age groups, Fox beats CNN among 18-29 year olds and 46-55 year olds, but CNN wins among those in the middle group (excluding here the major networks).

JUST ADDED -- a really good analysis of this poll by the ABC polling guy, Gary Langer, is here.  Worth the read.  He raises all kinds of points I wish I'd thought of, damn it.

Trust: Social Network Sites vs. Local Newspapers

You don't often find survey questions like the one below:

How would you compare news on social-networking sites to news on Web sites operated by your local newspaper – do you trust news on social-networking sites more, less or about the same?

It's an interesting question (entire questionnaire here), an apples and oranges comparison.  A foregone conclusion, you'd think; one is about trivia or people's lives, a bit about news but often about what they had for lunch, the other full of serious news but also horoscopes and sports and stuff like that.  The results?

Trust Social Networking Sites

• More:  4 percent
• Less:   38 percent
• Same:  36 percent
• Dunno: 22 percent

So I take some solace in the notion that only 4 percent trust social networking sites more.  I wonder about the 36 percent who see them as equal (and I pray they don't actually vote).  And I love the 22 percent who either don't know, don't care, or who find the comparison so deeply flawed as not worthy of their valuable time to answer.

Source of survey: First Amendment Center

Trusting the Media, or Not

A Study released today has Fox News and the most trusted, and least trusted, of television news organizations.

And here's a fun bit:

While strong majorities of survey respondents (73.4%) believed the news media (newspapers, radio, TV and the internet) should provide equal time and space for multiple sides of issues, a similar percentage (70.9%) said the same media should be free from government involvement and allow the market to determine programming demand.

You can read the rest yourself.  The methodology appears sound, the results -- a bit distressing.  Then again, this is nation that adores crap like Dancing with American Idol or whatever the hell it's called, so pfffft.

Trusted News Sources

A June Gallup poll includes numbers in trust in newspapers and television news from 2006 through 2009. The findings?

• Trust in Television News has dropped slowly from 71 percent giving some positive comment to 64 percent in the latest survey.
• Trust in Newspapers has inched down but well within the margin of error, from 70 percent to 68 percent.

Meaning what?

A Pew Center report (scroll down a bit to "falling favorability" for the table) looks from 1985 to 2007. It's more specific (cable news, broadcast tv news, etc.). Most media outlets drop here, from newspapers to local tv news. The biggest drops are by national newspapers and cable news.

How do we reconcile the two? In part they ask somewhat different questions, in part the Pew breaks TV news down to its various parts such as cable (CNN, Fox, etc.), in part it may even be time (Pew goes from 1985 to 2007, Gallup from 2006 to 2009). Maybe something has changed recently, a frustration with cable TV news now become somewhat more partisan due to a fragmenting audience -- that's a pretty good bet, but it hard to say, and I didn't have time to scour Pew for newer media favorability numbers.

And then there's the question as to whether "believability" or "credibility" or "favorability" matter for news organizations. As a former journalist I used to believe that if I wasn't pissing someone off, I wasn't doing my job right. And I tell my own reporting students that if they want to be loved, be a kindergarten teacher, not a journalist. Those who dislike the news the most are often those who consume it the greatest, a love-hate relationship that at times makes absolutely no sense, at least on the surface.

Public Trust in the News

Interesting report out, sponsored by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, that looks at the public trust in journalism. Summary here, full report here.

Those studied do not think journalists are dishonest so much as they find the product of journalism dishonest in that it's either confusing or fails to ring true when it describes the world in which they live. People could find more "useful, reliable, or amusing information elsewhere" (to quote the executive summary).

In place of individual medium loyalties (newspaper, TV news, etc.), people instead describe a "crowded media environment" that ranges from the silly to the serious. The three concepts of useful, reliable, and amusing show up in comments by real people, in one form or another. People, confronted with all this information, aren't sure who to believe. Adding my own here, I suspect that's one of the reasons we find people who claim to help it all make sense, from Jon Stewart to Rush Limbaugh, are quite successful today. They'll make sense of it all for you, even if one might quibble with the way, the fairness, of the sense they make.

There's a bit of political knowledge aspects here if you read carefully. Many people were confused in the U.S. presidential election. They simply don't know the backstory and often news accounts are written (or produced) with that assumption in mind. I've seen this myself as my teenage son struggles with a printed news story. The inverted pyramid simply confuses him because he's not starting with the prior knowledge necessary to make sense of a summary lede, which focuses on the latest information on top. Political knowledge suffers. People get frustrated. They look elsewhere for "sense making," often places where sense and sensible are not necessarily the same thing (i.e., Sean Hannity). And yet, and yet.

There's a lot here to digest and what I see reminds me of some other recent work. More on this report later, I hope.