As part of the We Media 2006 Forum that just ran in London the BBC, Reuters, and the Media Center ran a pol on Trust in Media. They polled the US, Brazil, UK, Germany, Russia, Eygpt, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and South Korea. An interesting choice of countries to make the poll international. Blogs didn’t come out as a trusted source:
Internet blogs are the least trusted news sources across the 10 countries, with one in four (25%) saying they trust them and almost as many (23%) saying they distrust them. Blogs are least trusted in Brazil (where 20% trust them and 45% distrust them) and the US (25% trust vs 38% distrust). Blogs are most trusted in South Korea (38% vs 25%), Indonesia (36% vs 16%), and Egypt (30% vs 15%). Across the 10 countries, one in two felt unable to say whether they trusted blogs or not.
On the most trusted sources internationally:
The most trusted global news brands among those tested include the BBC (with 48% across the 10 countries saying they have a lot or some trust) and CNN (44%). Even though Internet web sites in general do not receive particularly high trust ratings, three Internet portals received the next highest prompted trust ratings across the 10 countries; namely, Google (30%, a lot or some trust), Yahoo (28%), and Microsoft/MSN (27%).