New Study looks into student news trust using new website

A recent study by University of Maryland students engaged put their peers to the test in a variation of a news outlet guessing game.  Zach Daidone, Evan Thornton and Ashley Morse looked deeper into audience news trust focusing on biased stories, the relationship between audiences’ political bias and their sources of news and students political bias in relation to how they interpret the organization.  

The study utilized a fairly new website, Newstrust.com. Newstrust.com allows audience interaction with news by allowing readers to rate stories based off several categories and have their ratings of the story rated by editors.

Morse conducted a content analysis of 8 stories from Newstrust.com’s list of worst rated stories.   CNN, MSNBC and FOX news articles were measured to see the signs of bias present within the stories (authors opinion included, number of sources, number of paragraphs contributed to each side.)

 Morse found that many stories from FOX and MSNBC didn’t exhibit the traditional signs of bias, many of the stories from the two outlets used valid sources, equal distribution of paragraphs to each side, and a fair amount of quotes to each source. 

 The results also showed that stories from CNN, the outlet perceived as most neutral, contained many of the common signs of bias.  Chart 1.1 below shows the breakdown of each bias by news outlet. 

Chart 1.1

 Daidone looked further into the relationship between ones political party and their sources of news.  A survey of 96 participants found that The New York Times and The Washington Post were perceived as most reliable over FOX, MSNBC, Twitter, and other sources.

Daidone also found that conservatives and liberals perceive outlets often viewed as opposing their own political beliefs more reliable than one might think.   Chart 1.2 below shows the breakdown of perceived reliability amongst conservatives, liberals and independents. 

Chart 1.2

 


Thornton looked into whether knowing the original source of the news content changes how readers rate, interpret and perceive bias and balance in stories.  The experiment asked 40 students to blind read articles, match the story with a news source and rate the reliability of the story. 

Results showed that news outlets mostly known as bias were not perceived as biased during the blind reading of the story.  Thornton also found that unlabeled FOX news stories were perceived as fair and unable to be matched with the correct source in the blind reading of the story.  The further results of the story are shown in chart 1.3 below. 

Chart 1.3

The study found many inconsistencies with previous research showing that audiences still disagree with the statement that “I often don’t trust what news organizations are saying.” 

However, the researchers found results similar to previous studies that stated the higher the interaction news audiences have with the news, the higher the ratings for media accuracy are.  This was shown true when Thornton found that many journalism majors rated the biased stories as “slightly accurate” compared to the non-journalism majors. 

Morse said, “The study is not a trail blazer, but overall it leaves room for further research into the hostile media effect from all aspects.” 

This study started small, but it opens doors for a closer look into audience news trust, and triggers that cause the audience distrust.