The BBC, Reuters and The Media Center have been holding We The Media today in London. There are a couple of blogs from the event here, here and here, and the BBC has been streaming it too.
But one interesting piece of research to be shared at the event comes from a specially commissioned survey from Globescan. The key finding of the survey was that more people trust the media that their governments. However, this wasn’t the case in Western countries, with the US, UK and Germany all showing more trust in their governments than their media. (Do 67% of Americans really have “a lot” or “some trust” in their government at a time when Bush’s approval ratings are so low?)
Another question asked about the most trusted media brands. In the UK, the results were, perhaps, not that surprising, with 32% naming the BBC first, followed by 8% naming ITV and 7% Sky. But very scarily, in the US, 11% named Fox News as their most trusted brand (this was the top first mention), followed by 11% for CNN (yes, I know that should be 1st equal, but I’m just reporting it the way the press release did). Third placed was ABC with just 4%. Quite who everyone else trusts is not reported, but let’s just go through that again. The most trusted media brand in the US is Fox News.
Oh dear.