Public trust in media rises but most think government is lying
Public trust in the Australian media has increased significantly, while trust in the Government has fallen, a survey published today by PR agency Edelman suggests.
According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, confidence in the media to do the right thing has risen from 32% last year to 43% this year. At the same time, trust in the Government to do the right thing has declined from 52% to 47%.
Whereas a year ago, the gap between public trust in media and government was 20%, it is now just 4%.
Non governmental organisations such as charities and campaign groups remain the most trusted organisations with 65% saying they either trust them or trust them “a great deal”.
Business also scored relatively highly, at 57%.
Meanwhile, traditional media remains the most trusted information source, with 32% saying they trust it “a great deal”. Online was just behind at 30% while social media was on 13%.
Edelman’s Trust Barometer began in previous years with a survey of what it describes as 200 of “the informed public” – high income, college-educate Australians who read or watch business/news media and follow public policy issues – whose responses are featured in the tables above. This year, the survey also included 1000 of the general Aussie population.
Trust in the government from the wider sample was poor too.
While 70% said it was important that the government communicated honestly and frequently, only 13% felt that it did so.
And while 68% agreed that the government needed to have transparent and open practices, only 12% thinks it does so.
In another question the public was asked: “How much do you trust your government leaders to tell the truth, regardless of how complex or unpopular it is?” 60% said they did not trust them.
Edelman CEO Michelle Hutton said: “There is a complete misalignment between the public’s expectations of government and what they think is actually being delivered.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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I don’t trust the media when they publish rubbish surveys put out by PR agencies. You need at least 3000 people for a half accurate survey.
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Social media trust at only 13%. what exactly are they assessing in social media? I trust my friends far more than any of the above categories.
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Matthew Gain here I work at Edelman.
@Richard – I have just spoken with our research guys at StrategyOne. The room for error in a survey of 1,000 people is roughly 3%+/- on any given question. If the sample size is increased to 3,000 then the error gap is reduced to around 2%. Thus a 200% increase in the sample provides very little additional accuracy.
I’ve been advised that most surveys by Gallop and Roy Morgan are typically around the 1,000 mark. The Fairfax poll much reported this week on Gillard’s improved performance was a sample size of 1,400 people.
The Trust Barometer is a survey of 30,000 people that has been run for 12 years. Though perhaps you weren’t referring to our study when you mention rubbish surveys?
@Jamie – The 12% was generated by asking people if they trust social media as source of information about a company. The 13% represents people that selected top box (i.e. gave it the 9 out 9 rating) to this question – they trust social media a great deal as a source of information about a company.
It shows that companies using social media is a growing credible source for the public. I.e. ensure you are communicating via social.
In response to your question. I trust my friends as well, though if I wanted to verify something I heard in social media I might be inclined to check it on a traditional news site. I think that is why traditional media rates higher. Though that is just my opinion.
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@Richard – I just received this from Strategy One which provides more data on the sample size.
1000 nationally representative adults 18+ is the default media and corporate std for public opinion surveys in Aus, UK, USA.
This gives a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1 pct at a 95pct confidence level.
Going to 3000 people triples the cost but only marginally improves the error to +/- 1.8 pct which is why few go higher than 1000.
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Richard – The more survey participants the better – of course. Under normal circumstances I think it’s a fair response rate (for this type of barometer). BUT why did they allow 1000 general public consumers but only 200 ‘educated’ ones?
Also – what was their definition of ‘social media’ ??
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“College educated” Australians? Really?
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@Marie – The 200 educated, or as we have termed it ‘informed participants’ were interviewed via phone interviews. The 1,000 were via an online survey. We would have loved to do more of the informed constituent via phone, but the reality is the more we interviewed the more it would have cost.
Regarding your question about social media the question posed to respondents was:
Below is a list of places where you might get information about a company. For each, please indicate if you trust it a great deal, somewhat, not too much, or not at all as a source of information about a company.
– Traditional media
– Online media sources
– Social media
– Corporate materials
The 13% represents the number of people that listed social media as a source they trust a great deal.
The way the respondent interpreted social media was up to them.
I hope that answers your questions. Though feel free to drop me a line at matthew.gain (at) edelman (dot) com if you would like more info.
@Rebecca Read college educated as University educated. The report is a global one and whilst we have local data and localised the results we didn’t change this. Thanks for pointing out though, we will change for next year.
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@Matthew – Survey houses are the kings of spin. Of course they are going to say that. Anyway it’s not what they think that matters, it’s the media and any journo worth their salt will question you on your numbers – even more so when it’s put out by a PR agency.
I hope you get bang for your buck with this survey and your agency is considered a thought leader and you win more clients. Sadly, I think it will go largely unnoticed by anyone outside your organisation.
I mean, just take a look at the number of comments the story has sparked from readers. Most of them come from you.
I don’t know why PR agencies bother with these self-absorbed marketing tactics – they don’t achieve anything but to annoy people, particularly those in the industry.
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Hi Richard,
With the selfish caveat that I’m coming at this from Mumbrella’s point of view – which is to look at matters media & marketing – I’d argue that this survey falls into the realtively rare category of containing interesting insights.
Of course we can debate how reliable the sample size is, but I’d argue, it asks interesting questions, so from that point alone is of value.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
The issues raised about the trust deficit, are important questions, and there is reliable and vaild data available which addresses them. It is difficult to draw any valid and reliable conclusions about this data without knowing the sample design, and indeed, the questions asked, and the methods by which the respondents were recruited. Was it a stratified sample, or a convenience sample? Were the questions open or closed? You may think this unnecessarily arcane, but my professional judgement, as one who deals with this sort of data every day, is that I would not accept responses to these questions based on a sample of 200. Newspoll uses a stratified sample of 1200.
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Professor, a quick Google news search showed zero coverage in Oz (except this article in Mumbrella), so it’s safe to assume the media don’t trust the stats either, or more to the point aren’t interested as the results aren’t surprising.
Tim – not having a go at you for publishing this. It’s good to have a healthy debate about these sorts of things.
The UK PR industry went survey crazy a few years ago and sadly Oz is following in the same direction. We need to be careful going down this path. Fortunately I don’t think the approach will work as effectively with Aussie media.
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