Who Do You Trust and Why?

• Author: SALTZMAN, JOE
• Position: The television broadcasting of news is trusted by more people than any other source of news, including world of mouth

WORD OF MOUTH has been the way most people have gotten their information since the beginning of time. Many Americans throughout the early part of the 20th century relied on informed sources within their circle of friends and family for the majority of the information they received outside their personal experience. Newspapers and periodicals were used to complement word-of-mouth information, but the print media were utilized mostly by an elite whose opinions drifted down to the less literate who populated the country. Political bosses, labor leaders, patriarchs, teachers, and community leaders ended up supplying information to a large immigrant population that barely could speak the English language, much less read it.

Radio changed that. Suddenly, friendly voices were speaking directly to the public, offering word pictures of the world outside the neighborhood. This electronic word of mouth captivated a public eager for news as terrifying events filled their world. By 1950, television added pictures to those words. In the last decade of the century, the Internet created a new version of the traditional word-of-mouth communication: anyone, anywhere, could deliver news and opinion to friends, family, and strangers around the world. No need for any journalists to get in the way. The information flowed without hesitation, without anyone assuring its accuracy or reality.

So what will happen in the 21st century? It seems that new word-of-mouth news hasn't seduced much of its audience. Recent polls, including a significant Gallup Poll taken during the declining years of the 20th century on the public's use and view of its media, shows that word of mouth is less trusted than CNN, public television news, local television news, and prime-time TV newsmagazines. News anchors Americans see on television are considered more reliable as sources of accurate information than personal acquaintances. Most Americans have high levels of trust in many of the major old-fashioned sources of news and information.

The inexplicable phenomenon noticed four decades ago that broadcast news has a higher credibility than print continues. The American people still trust people they can see and hear for themselves, rather than those anonymous faces buried behind the printed word. Amazingly, local TV newscasts, which critics and journalists believe have been compromised into a meaningless melange of celebrity news and chitchat, still receive the highest trust ratings as one...