Going online to check media facts

Jeff Johnson - OneNewsNow - 6/18/2008 10:20:00 AMvar addthis_pub = 'onenewsnow';

According to a new survey, more Americans -- instead of turning to the major news networks -- are turning to the Internet to have their questions answered and to fill in the blanks when it comes to political coverage.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey found that 46 percent of all Americans have used the Internet, email, and/or text messages to get news about the 2008 presidential campaign. Robert Knight of the Media Research Center is not surprised.
 
"I don't think the Pew people have found anything all that remarkable because what they've said is that there are new ways to communicate out there," he notes. "... [I] bet you would find similar numbers [of] people who have shared recipes or sports scores using those very modes of communication."
 
But Knight acknowledges that people have to be turning to the Internet for political information for a reason -- and that reason, he contends, is a distrust of the media.
 
"... So, it's a good thing that people are checking it out for themselves," he continues. "It may also indicate that people have gotten wise to the fact that the mainstream media --which is supposed to be objective -- ... can't be trusted, that they do have a very liberal bias..."
 
According to recent research by Knight's group, more than half of Americans still rely on mainstream broadcast television and cable news networks for their information. But Knight says it is encouraging that so many people are supplementing those biased sources with online information.

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