Ideology and Public Trust in Radio as a Source for Local News

This study uses original survey data (N = 937) to examine trust in public radio and talk radio as sources for local news. Respondents expressed higher levels of trust in public radio than in talk radio. Trust in public radio was lower than trust in television but greater than trust in Internet sites, while trust in talk radio was lower than trust in television or newspapers. Compared to liberals, conservatives reported less trust in public radio but greater trust in talk radio. The relationships between ideology and trust were stronger among highly educated respondents than among the less educated. Notes The authors thank the Institute for Survey and Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for providing the survey data. The authors are particularly grateful to Linda Hawkins for her assistance in designing and conducting the survey. An earlier draft of this manuscript was presented at the November 2006 meeting of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research. †p < .10; *p < .05; ***p < .01 1The area under study consists of Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, and Waukesha Counties. 2The contact rate for the survey (contacted/(eligible + unknown)) was .64. The cooperation rate (completed/(eligible + unknown contacted)) was .36. The sampling error for the survey was +/−3.5%. Interviewers randomly selected household members by asking to speak to the person currently living in the household who was 18 years or older and who had the most recent birthday (no substitutions were allowed). Additional technical details are available from the authors on request. 3The following prompt preceded the battery of media trust questions: “I'm going to read you a list of local news sources. For each one, please tell me how much you think you can trust this source to report LOCAL news fairly.” 4The survey also included branching questions that yielded a seven-category measure of party identification (M = .45, where 1 = strong Republican and 0 = strong Democrat; SD = .36). This measure was strongly correlated with the ideology measure (r = .56; p < .01). When we substituted party identification for ideology in the models presented below, its coefficients paralleled the coefficients for ideology. When we included both party identification and ideology, however, the coefficients for ideology dominated. 5The frequency distribution for education was as follows: eighth grade or less, 2%; some high school, 5%; high school graduate, 26%; technical school, 7%; some college, 22%; college graduate, 24%; postgraduate work, 14%. The median income range was $40,000 to $49,000. 6Trust in the daily newspaper was significantly greater than trust in weekly newspapers, however (p < .01). 7Nonrespondents were excluded from these analyses. 8See Cary Spivak and Dan Bice, “Discrimination at Birkenstock radio station?” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 22, 2005; Cary Spivak and Dan Bice, “WUWM fires woman amid legal static,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 17, 2006; and Gregory Stanford, “Time to be intolerant of station's lack of diversity,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 21, 2006. 9In contrast, the level of trust in public radio differed little from the most educated highly conservative respondents (.54) to the least educated highly conservative respondents (.53). 10By the same token, the level of trust in talk radio ranged from .68 for the least educated highly conservative respondents to .77 for the most educated highly conservative respondents.