There was a time when the news that we read or watched on newspapers or the television were simply taken as the truth, no questions asked. That time is gone, however, as “entertainment news” and rampant biased interpretations continue to deteriorate traditional media. This can be seen in a recent poll which finds that people are more likely to trust news from Google than traditional sources.
Detailed within the latest survey from the Edelman Trust Barometer group, online search engines, like Google, have globally overtaken traditional media as the most trusted news source. Taken from a sample size of 27,000 people among a variety of countries, approximately 64 percent of respondents trust online search engines for general news and information compared to 62 percent turning to traditional news for the same info. That’s the first time that online search engines have surpassed traditional media in the trustworthiness metric. This shift is even more dramatic with Millennials, who polled at 72 percent in favor of online search engines. Of course, Google doesn’t actually report on news, but rather aggregate the most trustworthy sources that supply news. Online search engines also offer the advantage of accessing multiple news sources and viewpoints on a specific story, an advantage that’s difficult to match by traditional news networks, newspapers and magazines.
