RATING THE ONLINE SIDE OF TV NEWS

We've all seen the research results that say more people get their news from local television than from any other medium. And we've seen the polls that say most people think local television news does a good or excellent job. But how do they rate the online side of local TV?

A new survey of users of online news finds that local TV Web sites rank below local stations in terms of credibility. The Online News Association study found that 70% of people surveyed believe local television news to be credible, but just 60% said the same about TV Web sites. The study also found that 20% of respondents classified local television as not credible, but considerably more, almost 33%, said the same about station Web sites. By contrast, about 80% of users ranked cable TV and cable Web sites as credible, with just 5% calling each of those sources not credible. The results make clear that local TV Web sites have room to improve on the credibilty scale.

So how do people judge the credibility of an online news site? Timeliness is at the top of the list. The public expects news Web sites to be constantly updated, which could explain why they're disappointed with local TV sites in general. Too many sites update stories only once or twice a day, and they rarely indicate which stories have been updated and when. Online users also want sites to be accurate and fair. And they give a lot of weight to two factors that are not directly tied to content: brand carryover and ease of navigation. More than half said it's extremely or very important that the site is from an organization they recognize. This should give local TV sites an opportunity to build credibility, by clearly labeling their content with the same branding they use on the air.

The public uses a slightly different scale to assess the credibility of individual stories on a site. The top three criteria online users apply to judge whether a story is credible are the accuracy of the information in the story, completeness of the story (the whole story is reported), and fairness of reporting. Timeliness ("the story is up-to-date") came in fifth as a credibility measure of individual stories, just behind "news source is a trusted one."

Stations also should look closely at a second survey by ONA--this one collected journalists' opinions of online news sites, and found they ranked local TV stations and sites much lower than the public. Local TV Web sites, in fact, ranked near the bottom in terms of credibility, with less than 30% of those surveyed saying the sites are credible. Local TV news in general didn't do much better--less than 40% of journalists surveyed said newscasts are credible. Cable television news, by contrast, was rated as credible by twice as many respondents (80%), and 75% said cable Web sites were credible. Looking at responses from only broadcast journalists made almost no difference. They, too, rated local TV and local TV sites near the bottom of the stack in terms of credibility.

While the public survey was targeted at online users of news, traditional media were still their most popular sources of information. And local television topped the list, with 86% saying they had used it as a source of news in the past week. By contrast, only 23% had used a local television Web site. But the survey found no evidence that online news is drawing users away from traditional sources. Almost everyone who had used a local TV Web site had also viewed the local news on the air.

References:

1. The Online News Association's Digital Journalism Credibility surveys were conducted July-August 2000. Full details are available on the ONA Web site.

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