In a recent publication released by National USC Annenberg and LA Times, their poll shows the relationship between politics and the press.
The poll that surveyed 1,009 registered voters on the subject shows that Obama has a slight lead over Romney going into the national conventions in terms of favorability. But the reason why we’re interested?
The poll concludes that:
"The bulk of voters who follow current events daily turn to traditional sources, especially local TV news. Trust in various sources tends to depend on age and politics."
And so, the role of social media in politics has been temporarily rebuffed as a main source of political news for voters who follow current events on a daily basis. Image from: www.LAtimes.com
The poll quantifies a topic that IVN has reported on in the past; trust. Within these traditional news mediums, the amount of trust in them are nuanced depending on the user’s age and politics, saying that even though younger voters are increasingly using non-traditional forms of media for political news, they don't necessarily think it's the most trustworthy. When asked to rank the level of trust from 0 to 10 (0 being the lowest amount of trust, 10 the highest) local news comes out on top as the most trusted with an average of 6.6 as compared to local newspaper coming in at 2nd with a 6.2. Interestingly enough, in light of the Paul Ryan announcement breaking on Twitter, the social media site received last place in trust with an average being a 2.3 on the scale. Twitter may not have had such a large impact on the announcement of Romney’s VP selection as 54% of the 1,009 surveyed say they first heard about the candidate on television.
POLITICO’s Dylan Byers summarizes the main point to be drawn from this poll in a great way: “News may break online throughout the day, but it's still consumed on the couch at night”.