More Can You Trust The Media? trust fodder from the Online Journalism Symposium.
A paper titled “A Mediated, Interactive Call to Action: Audience Perceptions of Credibility and Authority for a Times Journalist in Print vs. Online” picked on the NYT’s Nick Kristof and asked people to rate his credibility as a columnist and video reporter.
Guess what? He’s a more credible columnist than he is a TV reporter.
People watching the video described Kristof as someone who is “annoying,” “sensational,” and “arrogant,” and who “talks in a monotone voice.”People believed the story more because Kristof’s video provided proof. On the other hand, … [s]eeing and hearing Kristof made some people recoil, instead of boosting his credibility.
According to the author:
people who read Kristof consider him to be an omniscient being telling the story as a principled activist…In contrast, people who watch Kristof interviewing his sources and witness him running all over the Sudan as his voiceovers narrate the victims’ tales have more of an opportunity to consider Kristof as a person and a reporter, and thus, to judge him accordingly (and more harshly, it seems).