While Canadian web users may not necessarily want to pay for news, a recent survey indicates that they still trust mainstream media content over sources such as governments, corporations and the latest growing media trend: citizen journalists.
According to a report from The Globe and Mail, the Canadian Media Research Consortium revealed in its latest report that approximately 90 per cent of “online Canadians” consider the information they get from traditional mainstream media (newspapers, television, radio, online news sites) to be reliable. On the other end of the spectrum, social media networks only garnered 26 per cent of Canadians’ trust, although for daily users of social media that figure increased significantly to 40 per cent.
The popularity of citizen journalism took a hit as well, as only 20 per cent believed it could offer regular coverage of government, 21 per cent believed it could expose abuses of power and 23 per cent believed it could deliver analysis of important events.
The rest of the survey broke down as follows:
- 65% felt news to be reliable from family and friends
- 42% found news from governments to be either trustworthy or very trustworthy
- 38% found news from corporations to be either trustworthy or very trustworthy
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The national survey was conducted last August by Angus Reid Public Opinion online, with 1,682 adults participating. The same survey also asked whether or not Canadians were willing to pay for online news. Not surprisingly, 4 per cent said they would be willing to pay, while a whopping 81 per cent of those polled stated they would definitely not pay for it.
Perhaps PostMedia should think about these results as they adopt its new “digital-first” strategy.
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