Building Trust

A new study by the Media Insight Project finds young people are following the news. Nearly 80 percent of Americans ages 16-40 get their news daily. This is good news. This age group will be leading the world and the more informed they can be, the better. The bad news, 71 percent of that age group get their daily news from social media, roughly a third of that from YouTube or Instagram and a quarter from TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter. Forty-percent get their daily news from Facebook. The upside, it was 57 percent in 2015 of people getting their news from Facebook.There’s progress. Forty-five percent of those surveyed say they get their news from traditional sources: television, radio and newspapers. A quarter of them pay for digital or print newspapers and magazines. That is an upside.Downside: 32 percent said they enjoy following the news, down from 53 percent seven years ago.Upside: Nine in 10 people in that age group say misinformation about current events is a problem. Here’s the head scratcher to me: most young people in the United States, according to the poll, get their news from social media. When asked who they consider most responsible for the spread of misinformation, young people said social media companies and users, politicians and the media. So you get your news from social media, but hold them responsible for spreading misinformation? The media is also taking a hit for spreading misinformation. Trust me, folks, traditional media is not trying to slant information. That is not how the business is structured. Clickbait, misleading information or just plain wrong information, fits a narrative to cater to a niche in order to make money. Slant equals money for social media. For traditional media, the business is structured where advertising and subscriptions pay the bills. Traditional media is a bus. It is a vehicle for advertising, the news fills the pages and gives you a reason to flip through. Slanting doesn’t gain anything for traditional media.Traditional media needs to do a better job at explaining the process. Called, Legacy Media, print, radio and TV need to work together on this issue.

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