Online Public Attitudes - 2006 Annual Report

Yet for all its obvious advantages, access and interactivity may also be part of the Internet’s Achilles heel as an information source. Last year we reported that even as the Web was becoming a ubiquitous and accepted news source, there was evidence that trust in the Internet was declining.3

And new survey research shows that the trend continues. In 2004, the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School found that the proportion of users who believed that most or all of the information on the Internet is reliable and accurate had declined for the third consecutive year, to just 49% — a steep decline from 58% in 2001.4

News Web sites are as trusted as traditional news media, according to the data. A majority (68%) of those who go online say they believe “almost all” or “most” of the content on their primary online news site, according to survey research done by Consumer Reports. That level of trust is about equal to those who trust newspapers and television news.5

Trust in news Web sites also trumps trust in other kinds of Web sites. Indeed, no other type of Web sites registered a majority of users who could trust the site to provide accurate information most of the time, according to Consumer Reports. And the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School found that the public considered established media and government sites more credible than information posted by individuals. Nearly 8 in 10 (79%) said most or all the information on established media sites such as the New York Times or CNN.com was reliable and accurate, with government (78%) right behind. Meanwhile, just 12% said the Web sites posted by individuals were reliable and accurate.6

Trust in Organizations for Accurate Information

Source: Consumer Reports Web Watch, "Leap of Faith: Using the Internet Despite the Dangers," October 26, 2005.

One episode that raised interest about the credibility of individual postings unfolded in early December, 2005. After an anonymous poster had published a largely fictional entry for John Siegenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville , on the online encyclopedia site Wikipedia. Siegenthaler wrote about the posting in an op-ed in USA Today. Later, an amateur cybersleuth traced the posting to a computer in Nashville , which led to the perpetrator’s eventual confession. While no civil suits were filed, the incident did raise questions about the reliability of Wikipedia and other online sites that generally do not have the same levels of accountability that traditional news sites do.

There is also research that suggests Americans are demanding that the Internet, particularly news sites, deliver more on its self-championed capacity to provide transparency and accountability. And those expectations have only increased over the past few years. Almost 7 in 10 (69%) of online users consider it very important for news Web sites to clearly label all advertising, and that ads must be distinguishable from news and information — up 10 points from 2002. And more users want news sites to prominently display their pages for corrections and clarifications: 44% now report this as very important, also an increase of 10 percentage points from 2002.

Users also want to be able to communicate with editors and reporters: 47% say it is very important for news sites to provide readers with e-mail addresses to contact the site’s editorial staff, up from 36% in 2002.7

As for blogs, despite the desire for more accountability, people are drawn to them even though they don’t necessarily trust them. This skepticism is true even among those who read blogs.

Just 1 person in 8 (12%) considers the information on blogs believable most of the time. Meanwhile, 36% say blogs are accurate some of the time, with another fifth (21%) reporting they are never or almost never accurate. And just 23% of blog readers say they can trust blogs at least most of the time while three quarters (73%) say they believe only some or nothing of what they read on blogs.8

We have also recently witnessed a growth in the use of digital photography over the Internet. Concerns about fakery surrounded the publication of a Reuters photograph of President Bush at the United Nations writing a note to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice about a “bathroom break” that was widely and quickly circulated both at home and abroad. The photo, though embarrassing for the president, was real.

Does the American public worry about digitally enhanced, modified or even fake photos? Apparently not as much as one might suspect, according to survey research. While nearly half (47%) of online users say they have come across a manipulated digital photo, more than two thirds (67%) say they trust online news sites a lot or somewhat to use authentic photographs; 30% have little or no trust .9