A major 10-nation public opinion poll exploring Trust in the Media has found that even though the media is more trusted than the national government in half the countries surveyed, significant numbers of people are switching news sources because they do not trust the information they receive.
Fully 28 percent of the people polled report abandoning a news source in the past year because of lack of trust in its content. While the poll shows that overall trust in the media has remained relatively stable over the past 4 years, it also reveals clear trust winners and losers among different news media.
Internet news sources appear to be winning audiences as a result of loss of trust in traditional sources -- especially young urban men. However, just as many people distrust blogs as trust them.
The poll of 10,230 people was conducted for the BBC, Reuters, and The Media Center by the international polling firm GlobeScan and its research partners in each country, with interviews conducted between 10 March and 4 April 2006.