The Pew Research Center has taken an in-depth look at the news audience and their habits in getting their information from broadcast, print and online, and how they view the credibility of each source. The survey, conducted April 30-June 1, produced an audience profile that will no doubt be grist for analysis by media organizations as well as political types who are always on the lookout about the best means to get their messages out.
The topline result of the survey was to categorize the news audience into four groups:
- The biggest group, at 46 percent of those surveyed, are still Traditionalists who are older, less affluent and less educated and rely heavily on television for their news. Most have computers, but few use them to search for news.
- The next biggest group, at 23 percent, are Integrators, who get their news both from traditional sources, mainly television, but also get news on a typical day from online. They are mostly middle-aged, well-educated and affluent.
- Net-newsers, as the name suggests, rely primarily on the internet for news and are at the cutting edge of using new web features and other technologies. About twice as many of them will watch a news video on the web instead of on a nightly news broadcast. Their median age is 35, they are affluent and 8 in 10 have attended college. They make up 13 percent of the audience.
- The Disengaged, who make up 14 percent of the sample, are less affluent and educated than even traditionalists. Only 55 percent get news on a given day and only 20 percent knew the Democrats control the House.
But whatever the platform of choice, the news public has a high degree of skepticism about the credibility of media.
Virtually every broadcast and cable news organization has seen its credibility go down since 1998 with CNN suffering the greatest slide, from 42 percent to 30 percent. National Public Radio was the exception, growing in trust from 19 percent to 27 percent. Print credibility was also low, with the percentage of readers trusting their daily newspaper falling from 29 percent to 22 percent.
Online news outlets did no better. Although we're not sure how Pew arrived at these particular choices (particularly since it includes aggregators), they asked respondents to rate Google News, Yahoo News, AOL News, Drudge, Salon, the Huffington Post and Slate. None were viewed as highly credible by even a quarter of users who read enough of them to express an opinion.
Other findings:
- Asked about 18 categories of news. weather by far and away was the winner with all groups, ranging from 58 percent for traditionalists to 39 percent for Net-newsers. Crime was second for Traditionalists and Integrators and tied for 6th among Net-newsers, Politics and Washington ranked eighth for Traditionalists, third for Integrators and tied for second with Net-newsers.
- Since 2006, the proportion of Americans who say they get news online at least three days a week increased from 31% to 37%, which is about as many that say they regularly watch cable news (39%) and significantly more than say they regularly watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts (37% vs. 29%).
- Roughly four-in-ten Net-Newsers - and about a third of Integrators (32%) - have gotten a news story emailed to them in the past week.
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Ten percent of the general public regularly reads blogs about current events and politics, and another 13 percent said they read them sometimes. The greatest use is by liberal Democrats of whom 31 percent read them regularly or sometimes. A quarter of conservative Republicans read them regularly or sometimes. About 3 in 10 Internet users under 29 or those who have at least some college read them regularly or sometimes. Net-newsers more regularly read political blogs than watch network news.
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