Trust in newspaper journalists falls by 25% says report
Trust in national newspaper journalists – both broadsheet and tabloid - has plunged by 25% following the phone-hacking scandal.
Fall in journalism trust
The gloomy news for journos emerges in a poll by Nottingham University reported by freelance journalists Jon Slattery on his daily blog.
Surprisingly, the poll shows that while trust in all journalists has nose dived; politicians have made a remarkable recovery.
The backdrop to the poll is that in November last year; YouGov conducted an online survey, which probed public trust in various groups of professionals - covering the media, politicians, and senior police officers.
Nottingham University repeated this survey over the weekend of the July 15 this year – when the full implications of the phone hacking scandal were becoming apparent.
The university says: "By comparing the two surveys we think we can identify the impact of ‘hackgate’ on trust."
In a commentary on the results, the university says the fall in trust for journalists can most easily be observed for broadsheet journalists, which was gauged by asking about trust in '"journalists in newspapers such as the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian".
The survey found: "The percentage of the public who expressed trust in them fell by 13 points: this, despite the fact that the scandal primarily focused on tabloid journalists and was actually broken by a broadsheet.
"The public, however, do not appear to have made this distinction. Trust in tabloid journalists (asked by referring to 'journalist in newspapers such as The Sun, The Mirror or the Daily Star') has similarly fallen by around a quarter, although as this is from a much, much lower starting point the absolute change is relatively small."
However, while senior police officers also suffered a loss of trust there has been a remarkable resurgence in trust for politicians, with trust in MPs in general seeing a 7 point increase.
The university says: "Whatever the partisan effect of the scandal, the political class as a whole appears to have benefited from it.
"From these data it is obvious that the public has not only taken notice of the scandal, it has also reacted strongly in terms of who they now do – and do not – trust.
“In particular, it seems likely that the role of individual Parliamentarians in exposing phone hacking and the Parliamentary select committees anticipated scrutiny of Rupert Murdoch, his son James Murdoch and former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks probably played some part in improving perceptions of politicians."