New Poll Shows Growing Distrust of Newspapers and TV News

Gallup released a poll late last week that found that only 25 percent of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers and 22 percent have that much faith in the television news.

With nearly all news organizations struggling to keep up with the up-to-the-minute news cycle and to remain profitable in the process, Americans' low trust in newspapers and television news presents a critical barrier to success, wrote Lymari Morales from Gallup.

Morales cited a study from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism back in March which found that cable news channels and Internet news providers continued to gain an audience while less people read the papers or watched the evening news.

The Pew report asserts that 80 percent of new media links are to legacy newspapers and broadcast networks, making clear that traditional news sources remain the backbone of the media, wrote Morales. But so long as roughly three in four Americans remain distrustful, it will be difficult to attract the large and loyal audiences necessary to boost revenues.

The poll confirms what is increasingly being taken as conventional wisdom -- Americans do not trust the media. One of the stranger aspects of this campaign season has been candidates touting their editorial endorsements. While Attorney General Bill McCollum has made an issue of Rick Scott, his rival for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, avoiding editorial boards, this poll may show Scott may be on to something here. An editorial endorsement wont hurt a candidate (unless it is initially offered and then removed -- the New York Post initially gave N.Y. Gov. Averell Harriman its blessing and then withdrew it after implying Nelson Rockefeller was anti-Zionist back in 1958, which helped Rockefeller cut Harrimans lead in New York City) but it doesn't matter as much anymore since the public is increasingly skeptical of the traditional media.

The poll of 1,020 Americans, held between July 8 and July 11 but released on Friday, had a margin of error of +/- 4 percent.