Craig Newmark, the driving force behind Craigslist, also runs an operation called craigconnects which seeks to fact-check political news reporting and thereby protect voters. He engaged the services of Lincoln Park Strategies to poll likely voters to find out which sources of political news are considered most trustworthy. Newspapers are on top, barely ahead of network television and cable; social media/blogs is the cellar dweller.
Breakdowns look at differences in political affiliation, gender, race and age.
The study seeks to find out how many people think a particular medium is “very credible,” and against that high standard, none of them are. Newspaper leads the pack at 22%, followed closely by network television and cable at 21% each. Talk radio and internet each had a lackluster 13%, and social media was almost off the wrong end of the chart at 6%.
There are very interesting internals, which you can see in the six charts below. Democrats gave newspapers a very respectable 28% score, but that support melts away when Republicans rate the medium, scoring a mere 12%. There was a similar party line break for network TV, with Democrats scoring it 29%, Republicans 16%.
Talk radio was the one and only medium where the generally less-trustful Republicans scored it higher then there Democratic counterparts, albeit by a surprisingly small margin, posting a 16%-13% margin.
Newspaper
- 22% Total
- 28% Democrats
- 12% Republicans
- 27% Men
- 22% Women
- 22% White
- 31% Black
- 13% Hispanic
- 33% 18-35
- 20% 36-44
- 21% 45-64
- 21% 65+
Network Television
- 21% Total
- 29% Democrats
- 16% Republicans
- 19% Men
- 23% Women
- 21% White
- 32% Black
- 15% Hispanic
- 27% 18-35
- 23% 36-44
- 17% 45-64
- 24% 65+
Cable
- 21% Total
- 27% Democrats
- 20% Republicans
- 18% Men
- 23% Women
- 21% White
- 27% Black
- 15% Hispanic
- 23% 18-35
- 18% 36-44
- 18% 45-64
- 25% 65+
Talk Radio
- 13% Total
- 13% Democrats
- 16% Republicans
- 13% Men
- 12% Women
- 12% White
- 18% Black
- 5% Hispanic
- 12% 18-35
- 13% 36-44
- 12% 45-64
- 13% 65+
Internet
- 13% Total
- 16% Democrats
- 9% Republicans
- 12% Men
- 13% Women
- 12% White
- 20% Black
- 5% Hispanic
- 18% 18-35
- 15% 36-44
- 12% 45-64
- 11% 65+
Social Media/Blogs
- 6% Total
- 6% Democrats
- 5% Republicans
- 5% Men
- 6% Women
- 4% White
- 13% Black
- 10% Hispanic
- 6% 18-35
- 7% 36-44
- 5% 45-64
- 6% 65+
RBR-TVBR observation: This is an interesting poll, but there are a number of aspects to it that we would question. The most glaring is the decision to ask about talk radio rather than news radio – it is not the same as news radio and more often than not deliberately takes sides. If the other categories here are apples, talk radio is an orange.
The other quibble is the age groupings, which do not follow the established standards used for both video and audio audience measurement, and which are oddly incongruent. The study has 18 years worth of Echo Boomers, 20 years worth of Boomers, but strangely, only nine years worth of the Gen Xers in the middle.
