Who can we trust - Trust No One..?

In a poll performed by the BBC, Reuters, Media Centre and Globespan in March and April 2006, findings show generally more people across the globe trust the media more than their own Government*. This is by an average of 61% trusting the media, to 52% trusting the governments across the countries polled. A majority of people also believe the seemingly 'untrusted' Government has too much of an influence on the media:

"Two in three people believe news is reported accurately (65%), but more than half (57%) believe governments interfere too much with the media and only 42% think journalists can report freely. People are divided on whether the media covers all sides of a story, with 41% disagreeing."

(To read this in full please go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/02_05_06mediatrust.pdf)

Out of interest though - here's the chart of the poll's findings:

In the US and UK the poll found more people trusted their Government than the media. Across the globe one in four (28%) reported abandoning a news source over the last year after losing trust in its content. Three out of four people (77%) prefer to check several news sources instead of relying on just one, especially Internet users.

What is interesting about this is that if people are distrusting the media, and especially abandoning news sources for lack of trust, perhaps the uninitiated public are participating more in the process of news gathering because they trust themselves more than the initiated 'other' (initiated journalists).

Perhaps they feel they can produce the news in a more fair and accurate manner, in their opinion. They get to have their say and therefore, their comment/input on newsworthy events.

Using the end date of this poll as 2006, it reveals that trust in media has increased overall since 2002 - in Britain up from 29% to 47% and in the US from 52% to 59%. Hypothetically, if we say that citizen journalism, or certainly user-generated content really started becoming a major contributor to news-gathering in 2001 with the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11th, I think we can argue media coverage has become more trusted since increased audience participation.

Consequently, I will put to you my argument. The viewer/listener now trusts the media more because they are involved in it and feel media organisations are now less 'the other' and more 'us'.

Media outlets include a considerably larger amount of user-generated content than ever before. Perhaps there's a feeling among audiences, if you can't beat'em, join'em...?

Well, they have joined.

According to the Media Centre poll:

Two in three (67%) of those polled in the 18-24 age range follow the news closely every day.

Those most likely to have stopped using a news source because of a breach of trust, with 13% strongly agreeing they have done so in the past year, are more likely to be urban males, aged 18-24.

Further analysis of the findings suggests this young male audience is moving away from television towards the Internet – ten percent fewer of them, compared to the average, name television as their most important news source (46% as opposed to 56% overall); and 15% say the Internet is now their most important news source in an average week, compared to just 9% of respondents as a whole.

Who in particular, in your mind, do you think are the most technologically savvy? 18 to 24 year-olds perhaps? I would argue yes, in some respects.

Now I'll be honest with you, I have trawled through a number of polls to find out who, statistically, makes up the citizen journalist demographic, and evidently, no one has made this poll yet...annoyingly. I would argue though that logically it would be people who are working/out-and-about, who commute/travel around a lot, have video/picture enabled mobile phones/digital cameras, know how to use this technology, use YouTube...

(Just as an aside - personally I'd increase the upper age limit of 24 to around about mid-to-late fifties**. So, I estimate the prolific citizen journalist will be covered age-wise by 18-55 (ish). But that's just my opinion - I happen to know many fifties folks who wander around with a camera in their pockets 24/7!)

Now, if these are the citizen journalists, and they also cover the people who have wavering trust in the media, could it not be construed that they may be trying to manipulate the media to their constructs in order to trust it more?

The poll reveals clear winners and losers among the differing news mediums. The Internet appears to be winning. It says:

"National TV is still the most trusted news source by a wide margin, although the Internet is gaining ground among the young. The jury is still out on ‘blogs’ – just as many people distrust them as trust them."

And...who do you think are the main users of the Internet and online media? Who are the main people uploading their footage with ease and quantity?

The 18-24 year old global demographic are the ones watching the news the most and are (ostensibly) the most technologically savvy, is this why we're seeing so much more user-generated content?

These questions are rhetorical for the moment until I can find some stats to (hopefully) back me up. It certainly does give you something to chew over though - so have fun!

*Please do note at this point, the background to this poll is as follows; a total of 10,230 adults were questioned by GlobeSpan in the UK, USA, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, and South Korea in March and April. The figures are therefore, a combination of developing countries, leading global powers and all things in between. Please consider when viewing these figures the political structures within all these different countries are not the same, and hence I will be mainly exploring my theory within the UK.

**From personal experience, a number of people I know between the ages of about 25 to mid-to-late 40s, don't watch the news avidly. Sad, but true. In the event of a disaster, they may however, be the first to grab their new-fandangled, most up-to-date mega-mobile phone/camera and capture the event - think of the age range of the commuters in the 7/7 bombings. Hence I am still including them in the citizen journalist demographic.