Americans Still See Local Newspaper Reporting As a Bit More Reliable Than Internet Sources

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

While fewer Americans are buying the print version of their local newspaper, they still believe their local reporting is a bit more reliable than news they read on the internet.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 76% believe the reporting done by their local paper is at least somewhat reliable while
68% say the same about reporting from internet news sources.

Just 29% consider newspaper reporting Very Reliable and 17% say that about internet news sources. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

While 15% of adults say their local reporting is not very reliable, if at all, 16% say the same of internet news sources.

These findings are nearly identical to those found last June. But in March 2009, the two sources were almost even among Americans in terms of reliability.

Most Adults (64%) are at least somewhat confident that online and other news sources will make up the difference and report on things that people want to know about if many newspapers go out of business. That’s up six points from last year. Twenty-eight percent (28%) are not confident alternative news sources will fill that void.

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The national survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on May 12-13, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Adults between the ages of 30 and 64 are more likely to believe internet sources as reliable compared to those younger and older. Interestingly, adults under 30 are more likely than older adults to see local news reporting as at least somewhat reliable.

However, young adults feel the strongest that internet and other sources will adequately replace print newspapers in the future.

Women see local newspaper reporting as more reliable than internet news sources, while men see the two as virtually even.

Polling last December found that a plurality of voters (44%) goes online to read political news at least once a week, including 20% who seek such news online every day or nearly every day. However, 33% say they rarely or never go online to read about politics, elections and government.

Separate polling finds that 85% of adults also still own a print version of the dictionary.

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