Shafer makes the point that expressing mistrust of media is a largely political statement. To me, it's like saying "I'm counterculture," an some Republican suburbanites like to think of themselves that way, oddly enough.
I have long distrusted such surveys myself. What does it mean that 54% of the people believe what they read in the newspaper. Does that mean when the Daily News says the Mets beat the Cubs 5-3, half the folks think the Cubs, in fact, beat the Mets 4-2?
I wrote about a similiar survey a while back: For 53% Reliable Information, Click Here:
NEW YORK - According to a new survey, 52.8% of Internet users believe that most or all of the information online is "reliable and accurate."
Other highlights from the report issued by the UCLA Center for Communication Policy: About 61% find the Net "very" or "extremely" important as an information source, and Internet use is cutting into television time with Internet users watching about 4.8 fewer hours of television each week than nonusers. Among Internet users, 60.5% consider it to be a "very" or "extremely" important source of information. Just 25% consider it to be an important source of entertainment. The percentage of Americans who use the Internet actually fell, the survey says, from 72.3% to 71.1%, but the average time spent online was up substantially, to 11.1 hours per week.
That people are gravitating from the television to the Internet, especially for information, is, of course, extremely good news--at least for us. But while they are coming more, they are believing less: Last year the UCLA survey indicated that 58% of Internet users believed that most of what they read online was "reliable and accurate."
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