Reliability Study

(AP)

According to an Australian report of a Technorati poll, most web news consumers don't see a difference between the reliability of traditional media information and blogs. A news article out of Australia reports an official stating as much:

Consumers who get their news from the internet are likely to trust a blog for reliability as much as a mainstream media site, the competition watchdog said today…

"User-testing in early 2007 indicated to those carrying out Technorati's survey that audiences are less and less likely to distinguish a blog from, say, nytimes.com or other mainstream media sites," [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's Graeme Samuel] said.

"For a growing base of users, these are all equally valid sources of news, information, entertainment and gossip, and users are not necessarily discriminating between traditional and new sources."

This seemed to be a bit further than I'd been led to believe from keeping tabs of the mood in MediaLand. So I called Technorati – the authors of the survey – and showed the article to Marketing Director Derek Gordon who cleared everything up.

"I didn't speak to this guy," said Gordon. "So I don't know how he drew the conclusions. But there's a lot of inferences in there…

"He's slightly misinterpreting the outcome of our information.

"When we did user testing, what people indicated was they – and we're talking 18 to 34 year olds – were much less likely to use distinguishing words like 'mainstream' or 'blogs.' That nomenclature wasn't crucial. It was all information.

"We didn't mean to indicate provenance doesn't matter. We didn't mean to say they don't care who wrote the info. It's just information. They do notice that it was written by the New York Times. They do consider the source."

So I asked him "What about the Australian official using the word 'reliability?'"

"Him using the word "reliability," that was wrong.

"People don't assume that if they see something on the web, it's automatically true. That's not the conclusion our user group is drawing.

"They do look at the source. They do evaluate it in context. They just don't use the traditional delineations."

Which seemed to beg the follow-up "Then this is mostly a conversational shift, more than a perception shift?"

"Yes. It means the labels matter less to a younger generations, so using terms like mainstream media or vlog or blog or radio broadcast or network newscast … that's not what they do.

"But it does not lead to a conclusion that the younger generation doesn't care who's doing the writing. They pay attention to the veracity and the reliability.

"Brands still matter. CBS News. New York Times. BBC. It matters. So does Perez Hilton. Web consumers are savvy people; they know what they're getting. They're not idiots. Younger consumers have a strong BS meter. They know what's invective or opinion vs what is quality journalism.

"The only other thing I'd want to toss out there is that that the web – and the blogosphere in particular – are enormously self-correcting mechanisms. One person or one source spreads information that's wrong, and there's dozens of people waiting to correct it and expose it."

And with that we come full circle in a postmodern and multilayered twist. This post ends up doing exactly what Gordon observes: It takes the incorrect statement of our commissioner friend from Down Under, and sets things straight.

So Mr. Graeme Samuel, I hope this post finds you well. The authors of the study you gave a speech about think you're reading their data wrong. Having set the record straight up here in the US, this writer hopes you clear things up for your countrymen.