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Public Opinion Quarterly 56:147-167 (1992)
© 1992 American Association for Public Opinion Research
BIASED PRESS OR BIASED PUBLIC? ATTITUDES TOWARD MEDIA COVERAGE OF SOCIAL GROUPS
ALBERT C. GUNTHER is assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. I thank Cecilie Gaziano, project director for the collection of these data, and Diana Mutz, Steven Chaffee, and Garrett O'Keefe, who provided helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks also to Paul Mundy and Lulu Rodriguez for help with preparation of data and tables.
Mass media credibility has been defined and studied largely as an attribute of message sources. This article argues that trust in media can be better understood as a relational variable—an audience response to media content. In addition, audience assessments of credibility are commonly explained as the result of each individual's skeptical disposition, either toward mass media in particular or as a general trait. The author dissents from this view as well, proposing that distrust is more likely to be a situational response, stemming from involvement with issues and groups. Using data from a national probability sample, the hypothesis was tested by analyzing the effect of numerous independent variables on respondent ratings of newspaper and television news coverage of social groups. As hypothesized, a respon dent's own group identification proved to be the strongest predictor. The evidence was strengthened by replication across social groups, which provided built-in controls and demonstrated that an important part of the variance in trust of mass media news is within persons rather than between persons.
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