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The study first examines the media identification logic that the prime evaluating indicator for news media is public trust. Perceptions of trust are not only important from a marketing perspective, but also form a vital component of audiences' aesthetic criticism of news and news sources. Comparing people's attitudes towards media in America and China, this study finds media credibility ratings in China are much higher than those in America. Does this suggest that Chinese media are more credible, or are survey reports of public trust influenced by other factors? This study considers three perspectives for considering differences in reports of public trust – operation dynamics, imaged power, and national identity. We consider to what degree, and under what conditions, could the survey reports of perceived public trust in media be related to media system differences, both among countries and over time. The study also examines the role played by structural dialectics such as profit orientation or propaganda orientation; professionalism orientation or authority orientation; and imagined community or heterogeneity construction. Finally, given the limits of survey methods and wording, the study brings forward an evaluation framework for the availability of transnational comparisons of media credibility, based on five evaluating dimensions of identity mechanism: professionalism identity, antagonism identity, heterogeneity identity, public sphere identity, and the “Other” identity.
Liu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.