Credibility of Traditional Media and Journalistic Reports

RESEARCH METHODS
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RESEARCH METHODS
1. How credible are traditional media?
Media credibility is a multifaceted concept for which researchers uses different types
of approaches to understand and evaluate its components. While adding online news to it,
public have become more concerned about credibility of online news perceptions and easy
availability of news sources. With easy access to online news, consumers are also getting
concerned about trustworthiness of information and other physiognomies that seeks sources
are more reliable and credible. For traditional media, the leading feature of denomination
shows that it is alleged to be conversant. Television news are found to be most up to date and
time oriented on the other hand newspapers are seen more credible in terms of honesty,
balance and currency with having an additional feature of story telling style. Therefore, it can
be said that citizen journalism and news media are constructed on integrity. With online news
and websites, the traditional news media has made a competitor in news field which arise
further question for the mainstream journalists in traditional media whether to react to the
new competitor or become use to it. Generally, journalists have negative outlook towards
internet but again they are concerned about the credibility and reliability of online world also.
Such reactions confirm the institutional ability of traditional media and the legitimacy of
models of traditional journalism (Kovačič, et al., 2009).
Research in credibility of journalism and mass communication since past few decades
shows concentration of credibility to contemporary variations of new media channels. The
rise of online networking and social sites have made shut down few of newspapers and
magazines that have created negative headlines about traditional media prospects over the
past few years. However, significant increase of readers in electronic newspaper sites shows
that traditional media is more credible in relation to information on contemporary affairs.
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RESEARCH METHODS
Paid newspapers and electronic newspaper sites receives high ratings than online media
inclusively and online media creditability are recorded lower as their average score is found
to be the lowest among all other media channels.
From past few decades, overall trust of public and press has declined over online
media news. Even many organisations declined the surveys made by online media news
channels and even newspapers believability declined from 80% to 59% in between 1985 to
2002. For television news, the decline was seen in 81% to 65% during that time. Regarding
media credibility, the online information generally finds that people rates online news in the
similar fashion as they rate other media. Politically interested media users examine the news
media for viewing internet publications as credible as traditionally delivered corresponding
items. They believed that online newspaper; magazines or politically based websites were
evaluated by credible respondents (Cassidy, 2007). In spite of the fact that print media and
traditional news outlets are significant for organisations, people and digital public relations,
most of the newspaper websites are either published by credible sources or recognised
publications. From SEO standpoint, because of the trustworthiness of these sites, they have a
tendency in gaining high metrics and thus a back linkage from a traditional media news
publication can provide support with SEO rankings even.
Study shows that traditional media are more credible than internet news in which
newspapers perceived more credibility than television, magazine and radio. However, across
all four traditional media, the differences between them are not significant but consideration
of credibility given by mass media to moderate credible source is more important. However,
some of the internet users reported that online news was more reliable than traditional media
as they felt that online news were more credible. While other study showed that news sites
credibility was significant reason behind the growth of media channels (Tanta, et al., 2017).
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