Complete Story
09/13/2018
What Americans say it will take to rebuild trust in media
Figuring out just how to rebuild Americans’ trust in media is proving to be a tricky question.
The Knight Foundation and Gallup shared their latest findings on mixing the perfect potion, after previously testing whether articles featuring their sources or community-rated trust metrics would improve readers’ trust in media organizations. Spoiler alerts: Nope and nope. (Disclosure: Knight has provided funding to Nieman Lab in the past.)
This time around, Knight/Gallup researchers did this thing where they just asked (and also tested) their survey respondents what helps increase or decrease their trust in news organizations. In addition to deeper questions, respondents were able to select from 35 different factors for determining trust in organizations, such as “The type of media it uses — newspaper, TV news, radio or website” and “Its commitment to accuracy — not reporting stories before it verifies all the facts and being willing to correct mistakes it makes.”
