Defending newspapers' credibility

Philip Meyer, Knight chair of Journalism at the University of North Carolina and the author of “The Vanishing Newspaper,” recently wrote an article for Nieman Watchdog which claims news of Americans not believing newspaper journalism is not exactly true. According to various sources, up to 45% of Americans don’t believe anything they read in the paper. In fact, Meyer says that the rating system, developed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, has been exaggerated upon by journalists writing stories of newspaper doom. In reality, only about 13% of Americans responded that they “believe almost nothing of what (newspapers) say.” Despite the free interpretation of the Pew poll, Meyer points out that reader trust is still declining. Readers who said they find newspaper reporting credible was down to 55% last year from 84% in 1985.

Source: Nieman Watchdog