Mainstream media failing to make news understandable to public, says new report

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The mainstream media is leaving the public in the dark by failing to explain basic information about the news, a new report has suggested.

Audiences are being made to feel confused and excluded by reports they do not understand, according to the paper 'Public Trust In The News' by academics from Manchester and Leeds Universities, published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

In one example, none of the participants in several focus groups organised by researchers knew that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were from the same political party, despite extensive coverage of the US primary elections last year.

"Public trust collapses when journalists are perceived to be reporting on social groups, areas and practices that they do not understand," said Dr Scott Anthony from The University of Manchester in a press statement.

The study also suggested that while mass media leaves many people feeling powerless and uncertain of what to believe, the internet helps them understand the news.

Online media also makes them feel they can make a difference by giving them access to unofficial accounts from people unaffected by professional interests or political correctness and by allowing feedback to authorities, it suggested.

"We were struck by the confidence that people expressed in the internet generally and Google specifically as the most trusted resource of explanation and analysis," the report said.

"It was very clear from all of the groups that there is a pervasive trust in online resources as providers of the kind of useful, reliable and amusing information that they defined as news."

"Many media organisations have responded to the 24/7 news environment by moving resources away from local newsgathering to build an online presence," added Anthony in the release.

"This growing physical gap has enabled public ideas, expectations and understandings of national life to drift away from those expressed by the media."

However, the report also mentioned that the internet is leaving some people more confused than ever, because of its size and abundance of sources.

Journalists interviewed as part of the study were underwhelmed by amateur news reporting on the internet, contending that blogs usually provide nothing more than second-hand information taken from elsewhere on the internet.

The journalist respondents were also more likely than the public to say that news stories were liable to be untrue.

The full report can be downloaded at this link .