Phone hacking casts a shadow over the UK media landscape
OVER half of the people in the UK say the phone hacking scandal has reduced their level of trust in the UK’s media, according to a survey commissioned by broadcaster PBS.
The level of mistrust rises further still when asked about newspapers specifically, with 58 per cent of people saying the scandal had tainted their opinion of the industry.
Three in four people think media outlets sometimes lie to their audiences, while over half say content in the UK media has been dumbed down in recent years.
Traditional media, especially TV (64 per cent) and radio (58 per cent), are still the most trusted media with the UK public, with websites also scoring highly at 55 per cent.
Newspapers were trusted by just 38 per cent, with magazines languishing at just 25 per cent. Blogs ranked lowest, with just nine per cent of people trusting them. Despite the glut of stories broken on Twitter in recent months, social media, which also included Facebook, scored a trust-rating of just 15 per cent.
In the US, traditional media again leads the way on trust, with newspapers viewed as trustworthy by 44 per cent of Americans, followed by TV and magazines both on 42 per cent.