How they decide what source or individual to trust is collective – it’s a wiki version if you will.

I think news is now: real time information gathered by and distributed to communities of shared interest.

I’ve posted more on this as part of a white paper which is available to download on my blog: http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com and would welcome your contribution.

Pew asked about unfavorable views of MSM outlets, but did not (at least according to your post) ask about unfavorable view of ‘net news.

I’d be curious to see if there is some ideological tribe–as opposed to age, gender, etc, tribe–that is critical of internet news.

That might help explain what you characterize as the Fox theory.

“What is this morbid obsession that liberals have with Fox? It’s as if Democrats, pampered and spoiled by so many decades of the mainstream media trumpeting the liberal agenda, are so shaky in their convictions that they cannot risk an encounter with opposing views. Democrats have ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time and 98 percent of American humanities professors to do their bidding. But no, that’s not enough — every spark of dissent has to be extinguished with buckets of bile.”
– Democrat Camille Paglia

But first… look at the numbers, except for “Protect Democracy” the seemingly “positivie” side of the stats have all RISEN steadily since rising and then dropping swiftly in the post-September 11th period.

Yes, you could look at the graph and say “woe is me, the ‘Persistent Criticisms of the Press’ are so much worse than they were in 1985!” OR you could look at the graph and say “Wow! Why is it that in the last 5 years the Persistent Criticisms are becoming LESS and LESS??”

Well.. one could sugget that it’s interesting that this corresponds not only to the post-September 11th world, but also to the general rise of blogging, and this same “fragmentation” of the media that we hear so much about. Perhaps we are breaking into tribes, and perhaps it is the ability to access what our niche particularly prefers that is improving our overall view of the media???

More on my own blog! But next time, read the post and the graphs, and lets try to have a dialogue sparked by Jeff’s controversial and, in my opinion, not quite the right angle to examine, lets not just sound off in agreement or anger in traditional blog-tastic fashion…

–out–

By contrast, much press and cable news channel reporting goes into issues that are either matters of opinion or deal with subjects most reporters, particularly those with journalism/liberal arts degrees, consistently demonstrate they simply don’t know anything about, such as technical, statistical, or military issues – I once read an hilarious article mocking a pilot’s “obvious error” in a discussion of aircraft noise levels by a reporter who was evidently unaware of the existence of logarithmic scales.

“Watch Fox and tell me they aren’t slamming media all the time. It’s working.”

Is it working because of the effectiveness of some nefarious plot, or because the “slams” are valid, legitimate criticism? I see glaring errors in reports on issues I have expertise in all the time.

More and more hyperlocal content is appearing on the web these days and, while it isn’t as stimulating as the larger issues in the news, people really enjoy it since it directly affects them.

it might not be a heavily political “tribe” but iVillage is its own kind of media tribe–which NBC’s misunderstood in many ways…

It would be interesting to see what Pew has to say about PBS’s “The News Hour,” which I’ve never been able to reconcile with the MSM. Liberals hate it when Jeff Sessions appears on it, and Conservatives roar every time they see Nancy Pelosi being interviewed.

My daily news intake generally comes from online sources CNN, BBC, International Herald-Times, Al Jazeera, and, of course, your blog, here, Jeff. From there, once home, I tune in PBS. Occasionally I tune in to local news, but more often than not I get all the local news I need from the local newspapers. Local television is weather and sports….as, I think, Dave Violence cited C.S. Lewis as discussing… and LanceThruster is likely right-on with his reference to Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ – it’s bread and circuses, folks…

I don’t actually think of FOX as ‘negative,’ per se … more along the lines, perhaps, of the kind of biasing once promulgated by W.H. Hearst, to suit his particular agendas at the time. Citizen Murdoch, let us remember, is in this really ONLY for the money, and the party of the monied class is, after all, the Republicans. Perhaps ‘mercenary’ might be a closer description…

Bottom line, I would’ve expected that response between local and national media.

Boy, your world really is upside down.

It’s never been about “agreeing” with news. It’s about acknowledging facts, you buffoon.

I’ll be sure to check back in a couple of weeks for another laugh.