Americans Turn to Traditional Media on Major News Stories

September 18, 2009 World Screen
WASHINGTON: In the U.S., people still support the idea of a free press as a watchdog on government, and turn to traditional media on major news stories despite skepticism about bias in the news media, according to findings in the 2009 State of the First Amendment national survey conducted by the First Amendment Center.
 
This survey reports how Americans view their First Amendment freedoms, as well as the reach and credibility of emerging news media.
 
While new innovations such as Twitter have attracted users and headlines, television and other traditional news media remain the dominant source for Americans on major new stories, the survey found.
 
Television was the first source for major news stories for 49 percent of the people surveyed, followed by the Internet at 15 percent, radio at 13 percent and newspapers at 10 percent. This places traditional news media—TV, radio and newspapers—as the first source for 72 percent of Americans.
 
Twitter, e-mails and social-networking sites each were named by 1 percent of those responding. Similarly, for 48 percent of Americans TV is the primary source for follow-up reports on those news stories, followed by the Internet at 29 percent and newspapers at 9 percent.
 
In addition 71 percent still see a free press as a necessary “watchdog on government,” though nearly half of those responding strongly disagreed with the statement that the news media reports the news without bias.
 
Just 3 percent of those who had an opinion on Twitter found it a “very reliable source of news” and 14 percent considered it “somewhat reliable,” while 21 percent said “not reliable at all” and 13 percent said “not too reliable.”
 
Many Americans have yet to “tweet”: 49 percent of those responding didn’t know enough about Twitter to have formed an opinion. The “reliability rating” rose only marginally among the younger groups in the survey: For those ages 18-35, 3.3 percent said “very reliable,” while it was 3 percent for those ages 36-49. For older groups, the rating fell: 1.9 percent for those ages 50-64, and 1.3 percent for those ages 65 and older.
 
 

“The findings in this first segment of the 2009 survey suggest that while new forms of obtaining information, including Twitter and social media, are much discussed and growing in use, most Americans continue to rely on the same news organizations—including the news reports picked up by online news providers—on which they have relied for decades,” said Gene Policinski, VP and executive director of the First Amendment Center. “Clearly, emerging media are novel and are finding an audience, but there still is room for growth on the credibility side.”