guardian.co.uk,
James Robinson, Monday 14 November 2011
 |
| Phone hacking: The UK press is consistently rated as less reliable by domestic audiences compared with most other EU countries. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images |
More than
half of the British public say the phone-hacking scandal has damaged their
trust in UK newspapers, according to a survey commissioned by the American
public service broadcaster, PBS.
In the
YouGov survey, 58% of adults said the affair has had a negative effect on their
perceptions of the British press. Of those interviewed, 51% said it had also
made them less likely to trust all domestic news organisations.
One in four
Americans said their trust in UK media outlets had been eroded by the hacking
revelations, which have been widely covered in the US.
The PBS
report also found that TV and radio are by far the most trusted news outlets in
the UK, with 64% and 58% respectively saying they are confident in the veracity
of the news carried by the two media. Newspapers lag far behind on 38%, with
magazines trusted by just one in four UK readers.
The UK
press is consistently rated as less reliable by domestic audiences compared
with most other EU countries. The figures help to highlight the crisis in trust
faced by the industry on the day the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking andpress standards begins taking evidence at the high court in London.
Social
media sites have not yet become trusted sources of news, the survey found.
Facebook and Twitter are not regarded as reliable outlets for accurate stories,
according to PBS and YouGov. Twitter, which has become a key supplier of news
and information, particularly when breaking stories emerge, is regarded as
trustworthy by 15% of people. Blogs are trusted by fewer than one in 10 (9%).
Dedicated
news websites, however, are regarded as reliable by the majority of respondents
(55%).
The figures
are different in the US, where newspapers are regarded as reliable by 44% of
Americans, making them the most trusted source of news. TV and magazines are
both trusted by 42% of Americans, followed by social media (19%) and blogs
(18%).
YouGov
surveyed 1,108 people in the UK and 1,095 in the US for the first PBS UK Trust
report.
PBS, the
publicly funded American TV and radio network, launched in the UK at the start
of November.
Its general
manager for the UK, Richard Kingsbury, said: "It is salutary how public
trust has been corroded across all media and yet encouraging that television
still enjoys a high level of trust."
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