INT'L MEDIA POLL

The BBC, Reuters and The Media Center commissioned a 10-country poll of attitudes about the media. What I found interesting were some of the U.S. results:

The most trusted specific news sources mentioned without prompting by Americans include FOX News (mentioned by 11%), CNN (11%), ABC (4%), NBC (4%), National Public Radio (3%), CBS (3%), Microsoft/MSN (2%), USA Today (2%), New York Times (2%), CNN.com (1%), Time Magazine (1%), and friends/family (1%).

Attitudinally, Americans stand out from citizens of the other countries surveyed on a number of dimensions. They are the most critical of the news media’s reporting of all sides of a story; fully 69 percent disagree that the media does this. They are also significantly more inclined to disagree (46%) that the media reports news accurately; and more likely to agree (68%) that the media covers too many ‘bad news’ stories.


I'm not surprised that FOX got 11% but I was expecting other sources to do better. Excluding family & friends, the other sources are most trusted by 33% of Americans. Altogether, including family & friends, that accounts for 45% of Americans so I am wondering what the remaining 55% trust the most.

It also seems like we have a lot of WATB (© Atrios) who need more smiley-face news.