Newspapers less important. Online less reliable.
July 29th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
So much for the vaunted Information Economy. According to a report picked up in Gigacom by MediaBistro, a survey by the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism says Americans increasingly find newspapers less valuable as an information resource, and the Internet less reliable.
Reports Gigacom:
“Only 56 percent of Internet users surveyed agreed with the statement that newspapers were an important or very important source of information, while 68 percent said that television was, and 78 percent said that the Internet was.”
At the same time:
“A majority of users said that less than half of the information they get from the Internet is reliable, a new low for the 10-year-old study, and 14 percent of users said that only a small portion of the information they find online is reliable. Less than half of those surveyed said that they had some trust or a lot of trust in the Internet in general.”
Gosh. But, well, you know…that sounds like me. Newspapers are certainly less important and I don’t trust half the babble online (and none of the unwanted email). For that matter I can’t abide most of the programming on TV or the commercial interruption of radio. I prefer satellite these days. Likewise, we have caller ID at home which helps us keep away from answering the telephone between 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. at night.
Media is relentless and substantially poor in quality. I have more control over it than I do over government, however, and I can make it my own. So, the numbers really don’t matter anymore.
