ChristopherWhite.info/blog

One of the guest lecturers this term, and I can’t for the life of me remember which one[1], mentioned the difference of levels of trust the public have in various news media.

The percentage of people who felt that broadcast news was trustworthy was far higher than that for print. This was assumed to be due to the fact that broadcasters are externally regulated while the press is self-regulated (or self “regulated”, if you’re feeling particularly cynical).

There might be another reason. Broadcast news, by its very nature, comes with a face or voice attached. The familiarity of having, for example, Jon Snow beamed into your house each night increases the viewer’s liking of whatever Jon Snow is saying, and therefore their trust in him as news source, for various psychological reasons which I’m not going to claim to understand.[2]

I wrote that there’s a difference between print and broadcast. By “print” they really mean newspapers. But I’m wondering if there’s a similar, though less pronounced, difference between newspapers and magazines.

However strong a newspaper’s branding is, it’s never going to be at the same level as magazines, which effectively spawn a community and become almost like a friend. Some of the same familiarity effects may be relevant.

(And is there a place for this in the feature I chose from the list for the assignment for the Reporters and the Reported module: Magazines Fight Back.)

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[1] And while the lectures were recorded, hardly any of the university computers actually play sound. (Not that I would listen to every single one again just to find this out anyway.)

[2] And flatmate Andy, a psychology PhD, didn’t take the undergrad module on familiarity effects - it started at 9am.