Public trust in Australian media among worst in the world

Google at the top, eh? Maybe they surveyed the same people who think Internet Explorer is “that icon that makes the internet go”.

Wolfie!

Nice pick – up i blogged about this research last week too.

Have to agree – listing Google (an aggregator) alongside actual content sources seems to imply a malformed survey.

“Trust in the media was higher in countries such as China, Singapore and Indonesia!” Aren’t they all state run monopolies that shoot you if you dare disagree? Having travelled to a lot of these countries with heavily government censored medias, I’ll take the ‘dodgy’ Aussie variety any day of the week! (Now if The Herald could just bring back ‘Bristow’ in the comics!)

Not necessarily malformed. This could be seen to imply that a large number of respondents did not care about (or know of or remember) the actual content providers. All they know is that Google got them that info.

Maybe I’m being picky, but the question that was actually asked that led to Google being the top response was about who the respondents relied on, not trusted. The actual question was:

“Please tell me the names of the specific sources you rely on most for information about companies”

People rely on Google to search for information. I think that’s very different to “trusting a media brand”.

Interesting findings and makes one wonder if company CEO’s/management and government are being credited with riding their cos and countries thru the GFC’s faster and relatively unscathed in some instances. However, the headline (~possibly from Edelman’s press release) as well as reference to “Australians” and “Aust public” might be a bit misleading – see this link – http://www.scribd.com/doc/4751.....-Barometer

Edelman interviews a SEGMENT of the public that it calls the “informed” public (as opposed to mis-informed and un-informed !!) – that too the top quartile by income. Nothing wrong with that if that was the objective, except it may not be representative of the wider public or population of Australians!!

Trust in politicians and CEOs is up? What part of FAIL planet does this survey come from?

I’m really surprised Yahoo!7 is in the top 10 list for sources of company information. News.com.au isn’t even on the radar, which is fairly bizarre given the top-tier media brands that sit within it.

Also, on the subject of search reputation management, does Edelman provide support around SEM programs for clients or even some form of consultation as to where to place news and stories for the most SEO friendly results? Recognising the value of search results to a company’s reputation is one thing, providing the counsel to improve it is another.

The AU results Trust Barometer video has great production values, but maybe an auto-prompter would be a good next investment for your production team? 😉 Michelle’s a great speaker, so it’d be great to see her in action rather than reading from paper. Just a thought!

Sucko mendacious marketers!

Thanks Mathew. I do understand how Edelman have tried to represent the survey findings. What I am referring too is eg the headline “PUBLIC trust in Australian media among worst in the world”
and the content itself ” The AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC’s trust in the media is lower …….” (presumably this is only following your press releases and Mumbrella has not edited bits and pieces out )
As a result most comments here at Mumbrella and elsewhere, seem to infer that these findings represent the Australian public (and other countries too) –
This could also be one of the reasons why many of the comments are circumspect about the key findings related to governement and CEOS !! Does Edelman ever plan to interview the larger Australian public or do they think that the public is not well informed / not eleigible to participate?

I’m surprised it’s that high. The Australian media is just like a dog turd, to be avoided.

So state run/censored media like China and Singapore rank highest for trust over countries that have an uncensored media with relative freedom?

It’s an interesting result, but without the actual methodologies, this survey is hard to interpret, much like most surveys emanating from PR companies.

Assuming an even split between countries, the sample size per country would only be 220 or so. That’s not that big.

Where’s the measurements of standard error, for example? Is the SMH result actually statistically different from the AFR result, for example? Who knows!

Thanks Matthew. It would be interesting to see in future surveys how the public view (that matters no less, as you say) measures up to the opinion influencer’s views. From the (public) comments here, it seems the views are likel;y to be quite different.

Thanks Matthew. It ‘d be interesting to see how the views of the public (that matter no less as you say) compares to the views of the so-called influencers. Going by the comments here the wider view is likely to be very different to the survey findings !!

Another shocking example of how not to publish research.

As soon as I saw the sample size I dismissed the findings out of hand. 5,000 interviews across 23 countries. This included countries like China. I would probably be just about comfortable if 5,000 was just the sample for China. If the sample for each country was proportionate to the population of each of the countries included the sample for Australia could be counted on my fingers with the possible inclusion of a toe.

This is shameless use of research to generate PR.

I also have a nasty feeling the survey was conducted with an online access panel which makes any cross media comparison (particularly if that includes online) redundant and extremely unsafe.

Tell us what the sample size is and tell us how the survey was conducted. Don’t sell your readers short by publishing this rubbish.