Political blogs considered more credible than newspapers

Washington, May 17 (ANI): People who regularly follow political blogs and regular news media tend to believe that the content on blogs is more accurate, according to a book by a Brigham Young University political scientist.

Professor Richard Davis' 'Typing Politics', the new book published by Oxford University Press also showed that journalists tend to follow the liberal blogosphere more closely despite equal awareness of conservative blogs.

"Blog readers still get most of their news from regular news sources, but they are concerned that they are not getting the whole side of the story there. They suspect habitual bias in the traditional news content," said Davis.

For his research, Davis studied daily blog readers from a nationally representative sample and found that just 3 percent got most of their news from blogs.

He discovered that a majority of readers still got their information from traditional news organizations, despite some bloggers' predictions that they would entirely replace traditional media.

Instead. Davis said that blogs have become an echo chamber that extends the shelf life of news stories.

Professional journalists and political bloggers have different takes on accuracy in the world of political news-while the former pursue objectivity, the latter openly dole out their personal opinions.

Still, political bloggers have an edge with shared readers when it comes to the trust factor, what with 30 percent participants in the study thinking that blogs are more accurate.

Eight percent of readers said traditional media are more accurate, 40 percent said they're about equal and 21 percent were not sure.

Davis also questioned over 200 journalists to learn how they use blog content in their coverage of political news.

And he found that a majority of journalists were aware of influential blogs on both sides of the political spectrum, such as Daily Kos and Talking Points on the left and Michelle Malkin and Instapundit on the right.

But, despite equal awareness, journalists spend more time reading posts in the liberal blogosphere.

"When journalists take story ideas from blogs, those ideas naturally will come from blogs they read. These reading patterns suggest journalists may be getting primarily one view of the blogosphere," said Davis. (ANI)