The Politics of the Source: How the Credibility of a News Source Changes Based on the Political Perception of Blogs

The credibility of traditional news media has shown some recent signs of decline. With the increase in available news media comes a decrease in the use of traditional electronic news outlets, with people increasingly likely to use the Internet as a news source. Most traditional news sources have expanded their operations to include Internet coverage. This convergence of media formats expands people's options and provides journalists and pundits with more platforms for reporting both hard news and opinion-based analysis. This allows viewers to retrieve information with ease, as well as find news sources that are consonant with their personal worldviews and avoid those that are dissonant. This study sought to determine whether or not the credibility of traditional news sources was affected by the availability of opinion-based news sources and the audience's increasing desire for opinion-based news. The study determined that partisanship does not necessarily affect believability. People are willing to take information at face value regardless of the source or his political perspective. The data also showed that partisanship does slightly affect the perception of political slant, particularly when the source represents a political position. When the source is neutral, viewers perceive virtually no political slant