ASHLAND — Circulated news can be traced to the Renaissance Era.
In the 1400’s, highly sensationalized pamphlets were regularly distributed to the public, landmarking the birth of blatant bias in the media.
In the United States, the level of trust in the national news media peaked in the 1970’s in the Watergate Era, and has been on a steady decline ever since. The term “fake news” emerged in 2016, adding further dissonance between citizens and the national media.
For the past six months, I embarked on a journey to observe if regionalized communities trusted the local media more than the national media.
Crafted as the primary feature of a Capstone project for my graduate degree at Gonzaga University, the survey included eight anonymous, multiple choice questions regarding the public’s trust in the media and their preferred medium of news delivery.
Utilizing social media and by publishing the Google Forms survey on Ashland Source, Knox Pages as well as Richland Source, I was able to collect enough responses to have a pool of usable data to analyze. My goal was to have 100 total participators.
I also took paper copies of the survey to the members of Ashland City Council.
A total of 262 individuals participated in this unofficial and non-scientific survey, including individuals from Ashland, Mansfield, Mount Vernon and other north central Ohio communities.
The following data was collected, with the results being rounded to the nearest percentage:
According to the survey results, 89% of participants believe there is blatant bias in the national news media. Comparably, 66% of the same participants believe there is blatant bias in the local news media — a 23-percent difference.
This statistic suggests localized media entities are trusted signficantly more than national news media. However, most people still believe a bias exists even in local media.
Where are people getting their local news and information from, and how can those companies improve trust in the communities they cover?
Besides the “other” option, which registered 43 percent of survey participants, Fox News was chosen as the most trusted national televised news source at 19 percent. The BBC (17%), CNN (8%), CBS News (6%) and ABC News (4%) were the other possible options.
The level of trust in national written news sources was less definitive. Besides the “other” option (51%), The New York Times, Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal each were chosen by a significant group of participators and their levels of trust were roughly equal to one another (each of the three entities were selected by about 14% of those polled; amounting to almost 43% in total).
Those surveyed were also asked what was the primary medium where they got their news from; 34% said social media was their main method of news consumption. Online sources (27%) and television (18%) were the following most popular options.
This suggests that the most popular media platforms have become digitalized; these electronic news mediums have overatken radio (11%), newspapers (8%) and word-of-mouth (2%).
A total of 92 percent of survey participants believe social media has contributed to bias in the media as well.
In conclusion, I would argue maintaining journalistic integrity in the local media is crucial in improving trust between news sources and their communities. Local media must avoid setting an agenda that can be construed as pandering to external stakeholders.
Personal bias must be set aside to report the truth. To improve trust between localized media and the communities they cover, transparency is paramount. Articles and stories must be based on relevant facts that refrain from sensationalism.
