The valued attributes of television news

To set the scene here, it is worth examining evidence that confirms the position that television enjoyed over many decades as a news source. For many years, major surveys of public opinion have indicated that television is regarded by media-consuming publics as their main source for specific types of news. In the United States, for instance, newspapers held sway until the end of the 1950s as the most widely nominated source of world news and in commanding the largest share of the news audience across the major news media. By the early 1960s, television had narrowly overtaken print. Over the next two decades, the gap between the two media grew wider in terms of perceived importance and market share, with newspapers in decline while television grew steadily in prominence (Roper, 1983).

Evidence that was interpreted as an indication of functional displacement effects between successive old and new media derived from the progressive shifts in media rated as people’s main news sources. In the United States, a majority of people identified newspapers as this source in 1937. By 1945, majority support had shifted to radio. By the early 1970s, television was the pre-eminent medium at least in terms of public opinion about news sources (Basil,1990).

Similar findings in respect of the perceived importance of television as a source of world news emerged in the United Kingdom. By the early 1970s, television had forged clearly ahead of newspapers as the most widely nominated source of world news (IBA,1982). It has retained this dominant position to the present day (see Gunter and Svennevig, 1988; Gunter, Sancho-Aldridge and Winstone, 1994; Ofcom, 2007c; Towler, 2003). At the same time, it is important to note that the Internet has attracted growing nominations as a main news source. In the UK, between 2002 and 2006, television nominations were stable with two-thirds of people (65%) nominating the medium as their main news source. Newspapers (15% to 14%) and more especially radio (16% to 11%) witnessed their support fall, while the Internet (2% nominated more often (Ofcom, 2007c). On the basis of these findings, television remains a long way ahead of the Internet when it comes to people’s top-of-the-mind nominations of their main news source.

Such data, however, can be difficult to interpret. What does ‘main source’ really mean? Does it equate, as a measure, with the ‘most used’ or ‘most liked’ or ‘most trusted’ or something else? We do not know for sure. This measure is simply indicative of the medium that jumps to top of the mind when people are asked to nominate a preferred news source. This perception may, of course, be a function of the level of familiarity people have with television news. It could also be a function of other qualities of television as a news provider. Later in this chapter, we will consider other metrics derived from measures of actual or reported media consumption behaviour.

Another limitation of the basic ‘main news source’ question is that it fails to differentiate between different types of news. Evidence has already been cited to show that when media consumers are asked to distinguish and think separately about local or regional news versus national or international news, the major news media receive varying levels of endorsement as most preferred sources.

Even at the level of opinion about important sources of news, the significance of television as a news source has been found to vary with the type of news. Although perceived by mass publics as the dominant medium for world news, for many years, television lagged behind newspapers in the public’s endorsement as a source of local news. By the end of the 1990s, however, even here television finally caught and then overtook print media (Towler,2003). This lead was held only temporarily, however, and by the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, print media again overtook television in the context of being regarded as the main source of local news. This resurgence of newspapers was led by free local publications (Ofcom, 2007c).

Much of the mainstream news on television concerns political matters. In the UK, the medium was voted the principal source of political news (National Consumer Council, 1999). People do not just turn to television for serious news. In fact, many viewers lack any routine interest in serious issues such as politics. Nonetheless, they do have a taste for news which tends often to be linked to their entertainment and leisure-time interests. So they turn to television for the latest information of culture, entertainment and celebrity issues (see Hargreaves and Thomas,2002).

Further research into public opinion about public service broadcasting in the UK indicated that a majority of viewers rated news as a genre of personal significance (56%) and of importance to society (62%). Another question asked UK viewers to indicate, by giving marks out of ten, how important it was for the public service broadcasting TV channels (BBC1 and 2, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five) to provide news. Over seven in ten viewers gave marks of at least seven out of ten (indicating high importance) to news programmes that are trustworthy (75%), news and factual programmes that can explain things clearly (74%) and good quality regional news programming (72%). These opinions testified to the perceived importance of news on television as far as UK television viewers are concerned (Ofcom, 2007a).

We should not be too surprised by these data supporting the idea that people attach much significance to televised news. The consumption of news has long been identified as one of the primary motivations for watching television – and not just in the UK (see Rubin,1983). In fact, information acquisition and learning have been endorsed more highly than entertainment seeking out of the different motives people articulate for watching television (Rubin,1984). The expectation that insightful learning will take place has also surfaced as a reason for watching specific news and current affairs programmes on television (Levy,1978). Even if television does not always successfully impart information to viewers, they may still feel that they have learned something useful from tuning in to television news broadcasts (Adoni and Cohen,1978).

Research in the UK has indicated that the most widely endorsed reason for following the news is somewhat unsurprising ‘to know what’s going on in the world’ which was endorsed by seven out of ten TV viewers (70%). Two out of three people (65%) wanted to know more specifically about ‘what’s going on in the UK’. More than one in two (57%) followed the news ‘for personal interest’. Around one in four people regarded the news as serving more specific functional purposes such as providing topics of conversation with friends (27%) or fulfilling a duty or responsibility to keep informed (26%). Around one in five people (19%) tuned in to news for entertainment (Ofcom, 2007b).

Television has also been greatly trusted as a news source. Many years ago it was rated as the most objective news medium (Youman,1972). It has been identified as the medium people say they turn to first for their news about the world (Stanley and Niemi,1990). If the same story appears in newspapers and on television, the television version is the one most likely to be trusted (Lee, 1975 Rubin, 1983). Television is regarded as a factually accurate medium (Towler,2003).

The changing television marketplace, influenced not only by the growth in television channels but also by competition from the Internet, has found catering to all these information needs increasingly difficult. The production of high quality news is costly. With diminishing advertising budgets, many commercial television companies have found it increasingly difficult to cover all kinds of news. Those that operate under public service broadcasting constraints have found that providing local and regional news is a loss-making activity and have sought to withdraw from such provision (Ofcom, 2009d).

Television versus the Internet

The Internet has emerged as an increasingly important news and information source. In fact, it has been identified as the fastest growing new news source (Ofcom, 2007c). It has the capacity to provide large quantities of information in a variety of different formats. This can also be done relatively cheaply. Major news organisations, including national and regional newspapers, radio stations and television companies, now produce news routinely for online distribution and operate news websites.

The Internet has become established as a primary information source across a wide range of information domains (Gunter et al.,2003). Furthermore, the technology associated with the Internet has empowered citizens and consumers not only through the facilitation of access to an unprecedented quantity of information, but also by allowing them to become information producers and publishers in their own right (Gunter et al., 2009). This has extended the range of sources of information and broken down the divide between producers and audiences. Audiences have become producers and producers have become audiences. Increasingly, those who operate as information producers in the online world occupy different roles at different times as information creators, packaging agents, distributors and recipients.

The Internet has therefore conditioned new styles of engagement with media in the context of information gathering. To what extent does this mean that television – as an information source – must also evolve in the future? Must television emulate the Internet in the way it provides information to its audiences? Already major broadcasters engage with the online world and maintain websites through which they channel large amounts of information. These sites also represent the front-ends to large information archives that visitors can interrogate. News makers are now trained to produce news stories for different platforms. In this rapidly changing news environment, will traditional forms of television news provision survive?

Importance of different information sources

One proposition is that the Internet poses a serious threat to other media news sources. This position was reinforced by observations that young people were not attracted to newspapers but even in its early days regarded the Internet as a more fashionable medium to turn to (Nicholas et al.,1997). In particular, one claim is that as the online news market has matured, it has begun to displace news consumption from other major media such as newspapers, radio and television (Dimmick, Chen and Li, 2004). A different position, in contrast, is that this displacement viewpoint has been overstated and that there is only limited evidence that the Internet is making inroads on the market shares for news consumption of other media suppliers of news (Alexander and Cunningham,2007).

Earlier in this chapter, the evidence reviewed that showed that people perceive television to be their ‘main source’ or most ‘important’ source of news is a somewhat blunt measure. It may not actually indicate which news source is the one from which people get most of their information, regardless of the type of news (see Gunter, 1987 Levy and Robinson, 1986). Ultimately, the most important source is likely to be the one that is used most often. Furthermore, in the rapidly evolving media environment, the traditional divisions between ‘media’ such as television, radio, and newspapers have been diluted as all three ‘media’ have migrated onto the Internet where they compete on the same communications platform. On the Internet, the most used news websites in the UK were found to be those associated with major offline news organisations such as the BBC and the Guardian newspaper. In addition, new suppliers that have emerged with the online world (e.g., AOL News, Google News, Yahoo! News) have also attained dominant positions (Ofcom, 2007c). News brands associated with search engines do not produce their own news; they merely aggregate it from other news websites.

To continue our analysis of whether the Internet poses serious competition to television in the context of information provision, we need to review relevant evidence on public perceptions of the importance of these two alongside other media sources of information. Much of the attention in the context of perceptions of the value attached to different information sources is focused on news. There are other types of information, of course, that people seek out and in relation to which the use of the Internet has become increasingly prominent. Given the significance of news as a primary function of television, and in particular for television channels in the UK that have public service broadcasting responsibilities, this is the information type that will be examined here.

Findahl (2008) presented findings from a World Internet Institute study that found that the Internet finished in fifth place in terms of its perceived importance as a source of information to people in general, behind friends and family, television, newspapers, and radio. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, however, it was rated ahead of television, newspapers and radio. Such opinions, however, vary from country to country. Despite the diversity of news media now available to them, Canadians still voted TV as their number one news medium ahead of newspapers, radio and the Internet. In response to a question that asked about their primary news source, 48 per cent said TV, 21 per cent newspapers, 15 per cent radio and 14 per cent the Internet (Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, 2009).

Despite the rapidly evolving media landscape, UK media consumers overwhelmingly nominated the main five television channels (90%) as being among their primary news sources (Ofcom, 2007a 2007b). Newspapers (endorsed by 67%) fell a large distance behind in second position. The Internet finished in sixth place (endorsed by 27%) behind radio (52%), 24-hour news channels in English (36%), and word of mouth/face-to-face conversations with other people (29%). There were marked age differences in the extent to which the Internet was endorsed, with media consumers aged between 16 and 44 years (37%) being far more likely to do so than those aged 45 to 64 years (23%) or aged 65 and over (5%).

The importance of different news sources can vary with the type of news information people seek. It has already been observed that while television has been the dominant medium for international and national news, in the context of local and regional news, newspapers often finish ahead (Gunter et al., 1994; Towler,2003). When UK media consumers were asked about the sources they used ‘regularly’ for local news, local free newspapers (46%) narrowly edged television (45%) out of top spot, with local paid-for newspapers (41%) not far behind in third position. The Internet (endorsed by 8%) finished in seventh place behind radio (28%), word of mouth (21%) and national newspapers (9%) (Ofcom, 2007b). Here, though, there is conflicting evidence.

In another UK survey that asked adults from across the country to name their most common source of national news and of local or regional news, television was most widely endorsed throughout. While a smaller proportion of respondents named television as their most popular local/ regional news source (72%) than as their most common source of national news (85%), newspapers were nominated far less often in relation to both news categories (28% and 26% respectively). The Internet was nominated by much smaller percentages of respondents in the case of national news (22%) and local/regional news (10%). Even so, the Internet received wider endorsement in this survey than in the Ofcom research cited above (Hamlyn, Mindel and McGinigal, 2009).

Another relevant study was conducted in Singapore that involved interviews with 13-year-olds about their use of the Internet and other media (Lee and Kuo,2002). In this interview, they were specifically invited to say how important they rated different media as information sources. The Internet increased significantly over time in terms of its perceived importance as an information source. TV and radio also improved on this dimension, while newspapers did not change. Increased importance of the Internet also predicted increased importance of TV and of newspapers, but not of radio.

A survey conducted by the Pew Institute in the United States found that television was still being nominated more often than any other medium as the primary source of political information (Moskalyuk,2004). When asked about their main source of political campaign news, respondents answered TV (78%), newspapers (38%), radio (16%), Internet (15%) and magazines (4%). People in broadband homes were more likely to nominate the Internet as their main source of campaign news (31%). In these homes, the Internet surpassed newspapers (35%) and radio (15%) as a primary source of campaign news. Another interesting phenomenon was noted. Political news sites not aligned or associated with mainstream news organisations had grown in popularity. These sites were used by one in four (24%) broadband Internet users. This equalled the proportion who said they visited websites of major news organisations (24%).

Towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, evidence began to emerge that the Internet was being nominated in some parts of the world more often than other media as an important source of news and information. In a survey by We Media/Zogby Interactive with a national US sample of nearly 2,000 respondents, it was reported that more Americans nominated the Internet as their top source of news (48%) than chose television (29%).

In a subsequent simple test of preference, Zogby Interactive asked a sample of more than 3,000 adults in the USA which they would choose if they were allowed only one source of news. More than half of these respondents (51%) chose the Internet and just over one in five (21%) chose television (Reuters, 2009). This finding, however, may give a simplistic view of public opinion about news sources. Other findings nonetheless reinforced this initial forced preference, with more respondents nominating the Internet (40%) than television (17%) as the most reliable source of news.

One further note of caution with these polls is that they were conducted online which means that their samples were drawn from a universe of existing Internet users rather than from people in general (non-users as well as users of the Internet). These samples may therefore have already held an inherent bias towards the Internet as an information medium. Despite this caveat, it is clear that among that ever-expanding number of people who are online, a clear gap has opened up between the Internet and TV in terms of the prevalence with which they are chosen as an important news source.

Although the Internet has emerged as an important news source for rapidly growing numbers of people around the world, even in those national markets where online news has become well-established, television remains a widely endorsed primary news source. One of the factors underpinning the staying power of televised news in public opinion is the degree to which it is trusted. Research from the United States has indicated that while more people said they trusted TV as a news source than the Internet, the prevalence of that trust was not as great as it had been in earlier surveys (Rasmussen,2004; Rasmussen Reports, 2009). One in five (19%) respondents to a national telephone survey expressed uncertainty about which they trusted more between television and the Internet. The question here asked specifically about network TV news. This narrowing of the gap in perceived trustworthiness between these two media was seen to result not simply from a growth in trust in the Internet but also as a consequence of a decline in public faith in the three main TV networks – ABC, CBS, NBC – as news providers.

Rather than accept such findings at face value, however, we must ask whether such simplistic questioning is comparing ‘like’ with ‘like’. The Internet cannot be regarded as a comparable medium to television in this context. The Internet is a platform that provides multi-modal news coverage from a wide range of sources, including the TV networks. Furthermore, as we have seen, some of the biggest and most popularly used online news sources are associated with the best known offline news brands, including leading broadcasters and newspapers that now maintain a web presence. As such, even if offline new suppliers concede news consumers to online news sources, they may often end up competing with themselves.

Given the complexity of the news media landscape today, it is probably more useful to ask people about their opinions concerning specific, named news sources rather than to attempt to measure their attitudes towards a medium as a whole. The latter type of questions would have had more meaning in the pre-Internet media era with far fewer news suppliers and when TV comprised a relatively small number of channels.

What has also emerged, even at a news supplier type or brand level, is that news source preferences can vary between news topics. This observation extends beyond past findings that have shown that while television is nominated by most people as their main information source for world news, they tend to prefer newspapers for their local news. The Internet has established bigger fan bases than television for some categories of news. A survey by Burst Media of more than 2,200 adults aged 18 + in the USA found that 36 per cent of men and 33 per cent of women named the Internet as their top source of sports news and information. The second most often endorsed sports new source was local TV programming (24% across men and women) with national TV network news broadcasts in third place (15% overall). Almost half the respondents (49%) said they checked sports scores online (51% of men and 47% of women) and over four in ten (41%) said they read sports news stories online (43% of men and 39% of women) (Hahn,2009).

The rise of the Internet as a dominant news source within specific categories of news has also been mediated by technology advances as the adoption of broadband technology has increased the information delivery capacity of the Internet. Early adopters of this technology have also displayed more diversified online behaviour patterns, including those linked to the search for information (Gunter et al., 2003 2004). In the USA, people with broadband connections (31%) were found to be proportionately more likely than respondents in general to say that they used the Internet as their main source of political campaign information. Broadband users (35%) were hardly any more likely to say they used newspapers in this context. However, greater use of the Internet for political news did not necessarily mean that other media were used less. In fact, even when online, those seeking out political information used the websites of major news organisations. One in ten Internet users (11%) also used alternative news sites (Moskalyuk,2004).

Importance of different news sources: Internet users versus non-users

Internet users and non-users have been found to differ not only in terms of their use of the Internet but also in their preferred information sources. The UCLA Internet Project reported the not surprising finding that Internet users were far more likely than non-users to nominate the Internet as an ‘important’ or ‘extremely important’ information source (67% versus 26%). The gap between these two groups in their perceptions of television as an important/extremely important information source was much narrower (53% versus 66%). The gap narrowed still further in respect of newspapers (69% versus 66%) (Cole et al.,2003). The same survey also found that Internet users (52%) were far more likely than non-users (29%) to believe that ‘most’ information on the Internet is reliable.

Canadian research reported that Internet users were far more likely to rate the Internet as an important information source (scoring it four or five on a five-point scale) than were non-users (62% versus 11%). In contrast, non-users of the Internet (60%) were slightly more likely to rate television as an important information source than were users (56%) (Zamaria Caron and Fletcher, 2005). The same study also found that the perceived importance of the Internet as a source of information varied by age group. Adult Internet users aged 18 to 34 years (56%) were far more likely than those aged 55 and over (30%) to rate the Internet as an ‘extremely important’ source of information.

The future for television news

Rapid changes in communications technologies have posed both threats and opportunities for news providers. These changes include the growth of digital technologies that have transformed the media landscape allowing the numbers of media providers to grow within existing media (e.g., increased TV channels and radio stations) and via new platforms (e.g., the Internet). Such developments have been seen as having particularly acute implications for television as a news source. In the UK, Ofcom (2007c) commented that high quality news provision from public service broadcasting television channels could be placed under threat following the switch from analogue to digital transmissions. While news represents a cornerstone of public service broadcasting, as the television market opens up with continued growth in multi-channel platforms, more and more of which will become universally available, the cost of news provision under these conditions could render it non-viable. As well as expansion facilitated by digital technology with established television transmission systems such as over-the-air, satellite and cable, the Internet has also emerged as a television and video transmission system.

News about international, national, regional and local items will continue to be important to audiences and the supply of news has grown both on television and through the Internet. News is now available 24 hours a day all week long and niche news channels have emerged with rolling news stories throughout the day. Online news is also available and updated continuously. Within this crowded and diverse news environment, there is a need for the limited duration news of public service broadcast channels to stand out. The Internet has created fresh opportunities for broadcasters who can distribute their news online as well. In the online environment, however, news suppliers that have traditionally operated in distinct news markets, such as newspapers, now compete directly with broadcasters and often present news in the same audio-visual formats.

As in any marketplace that is highly competitive, commodities must stand out to be successful in attracting customers (Dimmick and Rothenbuhler, 1984a 1984b). This is the situation with news. What makes news on television special? Why would people want to continue consuming news from television, when they can find what they need online? What attributes are important to news consumers when choosing a news supplier?

Another important question that applies to the news marketplace in general is what the wider impact of the dramatic growth of news suppliers in the twenty-first century will be. News has become a global business. To be successful on that scale, substantial resources are needed. Few suppliers are likely to be able to operate successfully on an international scale given the costs associated with doing so. There is already evidence that a few major news agencies have evolved that dominate the provision of breaking news stories across the major news media (Ofcom, 2007a 2007b 2007c).

Television remains the medium of choice for most news consumers, while newspaper circulation levels have been in decline. Although viewing of broadcast news on television has also fallen away, this has not happened to anything like the same extent as for newspapers. In the UK, the public service broadcasting channels remain the major news suppliers as broadcast news provision has been dominated by the BBC and ITN with Sky News also becoming established as a key supplier. The public believe in the importance of these channels of news supply, with a clear majority (81%) saying that it is important for public service broadcasting channels to keep news and current affairs programmes (Ofcom, 2009a). In fact, most people (80%) endorsed the view that PSB channels should be obliged to provide regular news. Many others also felt that the BBC (61%), ITV1 (56%) and Channel 4 (51%) should not cut down on their provision of news (Ofcom, 2009a). In contrast, one in four people in the UK (25%) felt there was too much news on PSB channels.

As well as the threat from within the television marketplace, the more significant threat comes from without in the shape of the Internet. In the twenty-first century, news consumers have turned increasingly to online sources for their news. It has already been established that young people, aged 16 to 24 years, are the biggest users of the Internet. The biggest users of the Internet for news, however, are men aged 35 to 49 years (Ofcom, 2009a). The key question here then is to what extent online news is displacing televised news. If it is doing so, while both are received via different technologies, what level of broadcast news erosion can be expected once TV sets are fully integrated with the Internet?

Time devoted to television news

The demise of television news, if such an observation is valid, might also be indicated by the extent to which news consumers spent time with it. In the UK, a reduction has been observed of time spent watching news on the major TV channels (Hargeaves and Thomas, 2002). In addition, Ofcom (2007c) reported that the average number of hours per individual viewer devoted to watching national news on the main five terrestrially broadcast TV channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five) fell from 108.5 hours in 1994 to 94 hours in 2000. In 2001, the year of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the USA, annual news viewing on these channels increased to 103.4 hours. The next year it fell away again to 93.6 hours, before showing marked growth in 2003, the year of the war on Iraq. Over the next three years, however, news viewing on the five main TV channels in the UK exhibited steady decline and reached 90.8 hours by 2006.

More than half of this viewing time was devoted to news programmes on BBC1 (53.1 hours in 2006). In fact, between 2001 and 2006, the amount of time devoted to BBC1’s news output held up better than on any of the other four major TV channels. Over this time, Channel 4 lost 12 per cent of its 2001 viewing time (while its weekly news output was unchanged over the same time period), Five lost 23 per cent (with a parallel fall of 31% in weekly news output) and ITV1 (fall of 8% in average weekly news output) and BBC2 (100% increase of weekly news output) both lost 25 per cent, while BBC1 (16% fall in average weekly news output) lost just 2 per cent. These findings reveal a general fall in viewing of news on the longest-established TV channels, except for BBC1. This fall in amount of time spent viewing news on these channels was temporarily halted by major news events in 2001 and 2003, and occurred against a backdrop of sometimes falling or sometimes rising or unchanging news provision on specific channels. BBC1 emerged as a powerful news brand that held on to its viewers in a falling market.

Ofcom (2007c) also reported that audiences for the 24-hour television news channels increased dramatically from 2000. Major news events such as the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, the 2003 Iraq war, the London bombings in 2005 and attempted aircraft bombings in 2006 generated extreme spikes in viewing, but despite these, there was an overall upward trend in use of these new news channels.

News consumption patterns vary between different audience subgroups. Age is a critical factor with young people conventionally exhibiting the least interest in news. In later life, this position changes and news consumption across different media, but notably on television, increases dramatically. There were substantial differences in amount of time devoted to watching national news programmes on the five major TV networks annually in the UK, increasing progressively with age: 16 to 24 s – 33 hours; 25 to 34 s – 55 hours; 35 to 44 s – 73 hours; 45 to 54 s – 102 hours; 55 to 64 s – 147 hours; 65 + − 195 hours (Ofcom, 2007c).

What is perhaps most significant in the context of the current analysis is evidence that young adults (aged 16 to 24 years) have shown reduced news consumption across major news media platforms such as television, radio and newspapers, but increased use of the Internet. The average consumption of news from television in general among this age group was around 40 hours a year (45 minutes a week) compared to around double that figure for the wider adult viewing population (Ofcom, 2007c).

Self-report data indicated that whereas the traditional news media exhibited declines in the percentages of people who ever consumed news that turned to those specific media between 2002 and 2006, for the Internet the trend was in the reverse direction. Television fared better than either newspapers or radio in this context. Thus, the percentages of news consumers in the UK who ever used newspapers fell from 78 per cent to 61 per cent, while for radio users it fell from 60 per cent to 44 per cent. The fall for television was much smaller, from a much higher base figure – 92 per cent to 86 per cent. For the Internet, in contrast, the proportion of news consumers who used it as a news source increased from five per cent to ten per cent (Ofcom, 2007c).

These data therefore provide mixed evidence of trends in the use of television as a news source. Overall amounts of watching news on the major public service broadcast TV channels (except for BBC1) have been falling in the early part of the twenty-first century. Other televised news services have gained audiences. The medium in general has therefore been holding its own in the face of growing competition in the news marketplace.

Levels of use of online news

The Internet has emerged as a fast-growing platform for news and other information and contains a vast array of information on almost every conceivable topic. The type of information most sought online is related to travel (Gunter et al., 2003 Dutton and Helsper, 2007). Weather information, sports scores, and information about local events have also tended to feature high on lists of most sought-after information online (Gunter et al., 2003 Dutton and Helsper, 2007).

The Internet has become a widely used source of mainstream news information and some major news publishers moved swiftly to establish an online presence even in the early days of the Internet in a number of developed countries. Research in the United States, based on self-reported use of different media, tracked marked growth in regular use of the Internet as a news source over a ten-year period. In 1998, just two per cent of American adults claimed to use online news three or more days a week. This had increased to 37 per cent by 2008. Over the same period, reports of watching the day before interview (i.e., ‘yesterday’) nightly network news fell from 42 per cent to 29 per cent and local TV news from 64 per cent to 52 per cent (Pew Research Center, 2008). These data do not demonstrate that televised news was being displaced specifically by online news consumption, though falls in consumption of news on radio and of newspapers over the same time period indicated a general adjustment to the distribution of attention to different news media.

Further US research that invited adults aged 18 and over to report the frequencies with which they used different news suppliers provided comparisons both between media and across age groups in respect of patronage of different news sources (Patterson, 2007). In this case, a distinction was made between ‘national TV news’ and ‘local TV news’, with ‘Internet-based news’ not differentiated any further in terms of the type of supplier. In general, television was more likely to be used ‘every day’ both in respect of national news and local news than was Internet- based news across teenagers, young adults (18–30 years) and older adults. National television news (57% versus 31%) and local television news (62% versus 33%) were both much more likely to be viewed every day by older adults than by those aged 30 and under. In the case of Internet-based news, however, the extent to which it was used every day hardly varied at all across age groups, with around one in five respondents in each age category claiming to consume Internet news on a daily basis.

With Internet news, though, older adults (54%) were far more likely than young adults (45%) and teenagers (32%) to say they hardly ever or never used Internet news. The latter finding is probably as much explained by the greater overall use of the Internet by younger people than by older people as it is by a clear preference difference for Internet news. The different news appetites of older and younger people became clearly manifest when comparing age differences among those who said they made particular use of the Internet as a news medium in terms of whether they sought out the news online. Older Internet users (55%) were far more likely than young adult users (46%) or teenage users (32%) to display this motivation. Most teenage Internet users (65%) said they caught news online by accident as much as by design (Patterson, 2007).

By 2007, nearly seven in ten UK Internet users (69%) said they sought news information from online sources (Dutton and Helsper,2007). The latter data were based on self-report estimates of survey respondents. Even so, they were largely corroborated by data from continuous monitoring of online behaviour which showed that searching for news online attained a reach of just over seven in ten UK Internet users (72%) in 2007 (Changing Media, 2007).

Indicators of the proportions of Internet users who seek news at all in the online world tell us only about the potential reach of online news and not about how much it is used. In any analysis of functional displacement of television (in this case as an information source) by the Internet, eventually time-based measures are needed.

The top news websites in terms of user traffic volumes comprise a mixture of established news suppliers (or ‘brands’) from the offline news world and new online news suppliers. What is apparent, whichever news sites are considered, is that the general trend is one of growth of use. Ofcom (2007d) reported data from 2006 that showed BBC News Online as the most used news website with 5.8 million unique visitors during the month of September alone, a year-on-year increase of 17 per cent. In second place, a long way behind, was Guardian Unlimited with two million unique users for the same month, representing a five per cent year on year growth. From the News International news stable, the Times Online (1.3 million users) and the Sun (one million users) achieved lower user bases, but exhibited much higher year-on-year growth (29% and 55% respectively).

One new phenomenon in the online world is the emergence of so-called ‘news aggregators’ that collate content from other news sites and re-distribute it. The key players in this market were Yahoo! News (1.9 million users), AOL News (1.7 million users) and Google News (1.5 million users). The services supplied by AOL and Google exhibited marked year on year growth (26% and 22% respectively) while Yahoo!’s service reportedly dropped 6 per cent. The longer-term significance of these sources remains to be seen and will depend upon the quality of users’ experiences. These search engines have made sweeping claims about the diversity of their news provision, but the reality may be different with some exhibiting strong dependence on a fairly narrow range of major news producers (Ofcom, 2007e).

The amount of audio-visual news content on the Internet has increased not simply because news broadcasters have established an online presence but also because newspapers, traditionally associated with text-based news supported by still photography in the offline world, have introduced audio and video formats to their online sites.

There has also been a dramatic growth of news blogs through which anyone can become a journalist and news publisher. Whether news blogs that are produced by independently-operating ‘citizen journalists’ are having a significant impact on the use of mainstream news media remains to be seen, but suggestions that they do have been challenged by Gunter and co-workers (2009).

There is no doubt, however, that the online world presents a more complex news marketplace for television news broadcasters to contend with. Online news derives from major news organisations, with broadcasters and newspapers competing together within the same environment, from news agencies with their own online presence and from the news aggregators, a distinctly online phenomenon. Audio-visual reporting of news has been forecast to grow as broadband Internet penetration becomes more prevalent (Ofcom, 2007e). The opening up of the online market in this way may encourage many other, formerly print-only, news publishers to produce news in video formats.

Receptivity of new news sources

Ofcom (2007b) explored the appetites of media consumers not yet users of specified new technology platforms as news sources for these new information suppliers. In general, around one in five current non-users of mobile devices (18%), interactive television (20%) or the Internet (20%) expressed an interest in receiving news supply services via these technologies. Audio and video news services were slightly more widely welcomed than text-based services via mobile devices (9% On the Internet, news websites (14%) and online video news bulletins (12%) had wider appeal than reading blogs (4%).

In every case, young media consumers were more widely enthusiastic about these developments than older media consumers. Those aged 16 to 24 years were far more likely than those 65 + to show an interest in mobile news services (42% versus 4%), interactive TV services (28% versus 7%) and Internet services (26% versus 5%).

It is difficult to predict the longer-term impact of the Internet on the general provision and consumption of news. It has created a level playing field in terms of access to news audiences and has created an environment in which operators with limited resources can still reach mass news consumer markets. As with any other commodity market, the suppliers that succeed the most will be those that give consumers what they are looking for and do so better than anyone else. Quality of provision is likely to remain a crucial attribute, so the major news brands can therefore still expect to enjoy some advantage even in this crowded and competitive market.

News source displacement

It has been argued that the Internet is displacing other major news media, including newspapers, radio and even television, as many people’s preferred news source. We have already seen in this chapter that television has retained its top spot as the most often nominated ‘main source’ of news about national and international issues. The Internet has demonstrated improved performance on this criterion, but still lags some way behind television. Perceived importance data, however, do not demonstrate whether older news media are being displaced by the Internet as growing numbers of news consumers turn online for their news, but some displacement data have emerged to support the substitutability hypothesis. Strong challenges have also been made to the extreme displacement viewpoint.

As with general displacement research, evidence for news and information-related displacement between the Internet and television derives from self-attribution data as well as from correlations between self-reports of amount of use of the Internet and television. We need to observe caution with any self-report data because of their reliance on the ability of respondents to recall accurately their behavioural histories linked to the use of specific media when they may not at that time of consumption have paid much conscious attention to their behaviour.

Even in the fairly early days of the Internet, evidence emerged from among Internet users that they felt it had reduced the amount of time they spent with older media. One online survey in the USA found that nearly one in four American Internet users (23%) reported watching less television since they started using the Internet. Smaller percentages reported reduced magazine reading (20%), newspaper reading (15%) and radio listening (9%). Not everyone agreed with this perception. Some Internet users even reported using other media more often: radio (11%), newspapers (9%), magazines (8%) and TV (7%). Others stated that their use of other media remained unchanged: radio (81%), newspapers (75%), magazines (72%) and TV (70%) (Pastore, 2001).

On occasions, the Internet was used to consume other media. Thus, one in six Internet users (17%) said they ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ listened to Internet-based radio stations and more than two out of five (45%) Internet users said they had read an online newspaper in the past 30 days. This represented a significant proportion of Internet users and clearly indicated the emergence of the Internet as a news channel (Pastore, 2001).

Lee and Leung (2006) stated that reported frequency use of the Internet for news and information was negatively related to reported use of newspapers, but unrelated to reported use of magazines and radio. These media were all designated as ‘information media’ by the researchers. Although designated as an ‘entertainment’ medium, television also exhibited a negative relationship with reported frequency of using the Internet for news and information.

Robinson and his colleagues examined data from a Pew Centre survey in the USA that explored relationships between time reportedly spent on the Internet and with other media (Robinson et al.,2000). Survey respondents indicated time spent with each medium via time ranges which were then transposed into single average time scores (e.g., 6 to 9 minutes = 7 minutes). Simple time usage scores were then computed for reported use of each medium ‘yesterday’. Data were examined for 1994 through to 1998. Internet use first registered in 1995 increased from an average of four minutes per day to 12 minutes in 1998. The use of television for news fell by two minutes per day between 1994 (41 minutes) and 1998 (39 minutes), though it had reached a low point in 1993 (33 minutes), after which it displayed progressive recovery during a period when the Internet was taking off.

The use of television for entertainment purposes also fell between 1994 (126 minutes) and 1998 (116 minutes), but again reached a low point in 1997 (85 minutes).

When statistical controls were introduced for the gender, age, education and income of respondents no significant or clear-cut relationship emerged between reported use of the Internet and time spent watching television news or television entertainment.

In one of its major annual reviews of ‘the state of the news media’, the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism (2006) reported further evidence from the United States (originally collected by Nielsen/Net) that nearly half of online news users (47%) said they spent more time online than the previous year and one in five (20%) said they watched less television. In another survey, originally conducted by Big Research, it was reported that young American adults, aged 18 to 24 years, stated that their use of the Internet had caused them to reduce their television viewing. The same report, however, also noted that not all research evidence was consistent on this Internet news-television news displacement phenomenon. Other studies by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Centre for the Digital Future at the Annenberg School, University of Southern California, found no indications that television news viewing was adversely affected by the use of the Internet as a news source.

Research from Australia indicated that the relationship between the use of the Internet as a news and information source and the use of other mass media in this context can be more than uni-directional. It is important to take into account differences between people in the value they attach to news seeking (Nguyen and Western,2006). In this case, one in four surveyed Internet users (25%) claimed to be frequent users of online news. Internet users watched less television in general than did non-Internet users. Among Internet users who sought out news and information, however, consumption of public television was greater than that found among non-Internet users. Internet news consumers watched less commercial television than did non-users of the Internet. In fact, the use of the Internet as a news source predicted viewing of public television even in the presence of multiple statistical controls for a variety of demographic variables and reported use of other media such as commercial television, radio, magazines and newspapers. Thus, it is not invariably the case that using the Internet as a news source specifically displaces the use of television in this context (Nguyen and Western,2006). This study indicated that people who are motivated to seek out news will do so both online and offline.

Not only has contradictory empirical evidence emerged about whether the Internet is displacing other media such as television and newspapers as news sources, there have also been accusations that some evidence has been misrepresented. Cooper (2006) pointed out that despite the claims of some news broadcasters that the Internet is taking news consumers from them, US survey evidence produced by the Pew Institute for the mid-2000s indicated that traditional news sources were still significantly more likely to be endorsed than the Internet as their single source of news.

Even if general populations of news consumers do not necessarily turn away from older news media such as television in favour of the Internet, it is often argued that the young are doing so. The difficulty with this argument is that it is essential first to establish what interest in news the young display at all. It is well-known that children and teenagers have never been great fans of news, regardless of the medium. Television news broadcasts made especially for children such as the BBC’s Newsround have drawn a loyal following, but these are exceptions. Nevertheless, as they grow older, disinterested teenagers often become highly motivated news consumers in later life. It is therefore perhaps more important to establish whether or not motivated news consumers are rejecting older news suppliers in favour of newer ones.

It has long been known that young people devote far less time to news consumption than do older people, but that interest in news grows as individuals get older. Comparisons of the amount of time devoted to news consumption among different age groups in the United States between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s found little change. That is specific age groups spent no more and no less time on news consumption each day prior to the widespread use of the Internet than after it had become established (Cooper,2006).

There is a further issue to unravel in any analysis of news displacement effects between new and old media. Much of the news provided on the Internet derives from the major offline news organisations that have now established widely used websites. In the online news world, the most used and most trusted news sources are the big established news brands from the offline world that have now got an online presence.

Canadian research examined the impact of the Internet on political participation (Veenhof et al.,2008). It was recognised that people today have access to a much wider array of political information sources than ever before (Keown,2007). The Internet has begun to play an important role in people’s lives in this context. People go online to obtain political news and to engage with politicians. Whereas they would once have been restricted to ad hoc meetings with political figures giving speeches locally or door knocking or via local and national newspapers and news broadcasts, the Internet has opened up many other channels of communication between politicians and electorates. Despite concerns that traditional news media may be placed under threat by the Internet, many of these media have also established an online presence. This presence not only attracts users online but may also promote use of their offline news outputs.

Although it has been reported in the United States that the proportions of people who report recent use of news on TV, on radio and in newspapers have fallen, while reported use of online news has climbed, assessments of how much time people spend with different news media (based on their estimates of ‘yesterday’s’ news consumption) indicated stability in consumption of televised news. This was judged to average 31 minutes in 1998 and 30 minutes in 2008. By 2008, an average of nine minutes was estimated to be spent with online news. Of further interest was the finding that overall news consumption across the major news media occupied only slightly more time in 2008 (66 minutes) than in 1998 (65 minutes). There was some slight loss over this time period to radio news (down two minutes) and more so to reading newspapers (down five minutes). In 2008, respondents still elected television as their main source of news and well ahead of the Internet in this respect regardless of time of day: in the morning (66% versus 12%), during the day (44% versus 33%), around dinner hour (88% versus 6%) and late at night (89% versus 12%) (Pew Research Centre, 2008).

News preferences, however, were found to vary in the United States with age. In 1998, television finished comfortably ahead of the Internet as the endorsed main source of daytime news (58% versus 5%). Further, this finding did not vary greatly across age groups. By 2008, a different picture emerged. It was only among people aged 50 to 64 (53% versus 23%) and 65 + (76% versus 6%) that television finished ahead of the Internet. For all other age groups, this pattern was reversed (18 to 24 s – 30% versus 51%; 25 to 29 s – 26% versus 50%; 30 to 34 s – 19% versus 56%; 35 to 49 s – 36% versus 37%). This could be explained by the relative availability of television and the Internet as news sources during the daytime for those age groups whose members were likely to be out of home, either at places of study or work, during daytime hours on most days (Pew Research Centre, 2008).

Credibility of offline versus online news

For an overwhelming majority of media consumers it is important that news, wherever it comes from, is accurate and impartial. There have been signs, however, that the public has become a little more relaxed in their attitudes in this context over time. This is particularly true of young media consumers. In the UK, Ofcom (2007b) reported a decline in the proportion of adult media consumers (aged 16 +) for whom impartiality was an important attribute of news between 2002 (97%) and 2006 (87%). Among respondents aged 16 to 24 years, this requirement reduced in prevalence by a bigger margin (93% to 73%). There is no conclusive evidence available to explain why such opinion change occurred, but it is possible that the wider choice of news sources and therefore of news ‘experiences’ has broadened the definition of ‘news’ for many media consumers and changed their expectations about such content.

Historically the major offline news media have commanded widespread and persistent public trust. Television is the most trusted news medium of all. This is not surprising given the political allegiances that are openly adopted by many newspapers and the legislative requirements placed upon broadcasters in the UK to observe strict codes of impartiality in their news reporting. The public might be caused to doubt whether their trust in even the most trusted television news brands is well placed under exceptional circumstances when a news source is found to have misrepresented issues of significance.

This happened in the case of the BBC in the wake of the Hutton enquiry that was launched to investigate an accusation of inaccurate reporting of the British government’s case for the Iraq war in 2003. The BBC’s editorial procedures were strongly criticised by this enquiry and the Chairman and Director General of the BBC resigned over the affair. Public opinion surveys carried out during this enquiry indicated that ordinary citizens were concerned that the BBC had made errors and that changes to internal editorial procedures and to the way the Corporation was regulated might be called for. These perceptions, however, were focused very much on the specific incident that had taken place and did not colour wider public opinion about the integrity of the BBC as a news provider (Gunter, 2005b).

If the perceived credibility of news sources represents a critical factor determining patronage by news consumers, any gain in credibility of the Internet over television in this respect could create the conditions for the functional displacement of one medium by the other in the context of news provision. As the Internet emerged as a news platform in the 1990s, it attracted news consumers. In medium by medium comparisons during this period, Internet news failed to command the credibility ratings of the other major news media – television, radio and newspapers (Flanagin and Metzger, 2000 Kiousis, 1999 2001). In later years, some evidence emerged that this position was changing and the Internet, classed as a single news medium, began to challenge the other media in the credibility stakes (Online News Association,2002). This observation has not been universally supported. In Canada, when asked to name their most trusted source of news, the largest single perception of respondents in a nationwide survey (42%) named TV, with newspapers in second place (23%), radio third (16%), and the Internet (11%) trailing fourth (Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, 2009). However, when asked to indicate the percentage of TV news they would watch on TV versus online, more than one in five respondents (22%) said they would watch news online. The last finding underlines a point made earlier. Simple comparisons between ‘television’ and the ‘Internet’ as news media fail to reflect the reality of the contemporary news environment. The same news is available on television and the Internet as broadcasters pump out more and more of their news content online.

Where the quality of Internet news was challenged in terms of accuracy or impartiality, critical observers gave as their reasons for doing so the relative paucity of fact-checking that might be found in journalism operated by mainstream news media (Bucy, 2003 Sundar, 1999 2001). One American study found that Internet users rated the Internet as highly credible to the same extent as television (Bello Interactive,2004). Such evaluative perceptions have been found to vary, however, with the specific evaluative term being used. UK media consumers in 2006 were only one- third as likely to say that the Internet, as a news platform, was ‘impartial’ as television (12% versus 36%). Both media also experienced year-on-year falls in the extent to which they were rated as impartial (Ofcom, 2007b)

The perceived credibility of news media can depend upon the specific events being reported. Evidence of this phenomenon emerged during the 2003 Iraq war. Research in the United States found that whether television or the Internet were rated as the most credible medium in terms of reporting about the war depended upon whether those giving the ratings supported or were opposed to the war. War supporters regarded television as also being largely supportive of the war and therefore as credible in its war reporting. Opponents to the war rated the Internet as a more reliable source of war news than television or other major news media (Choi, Watt and Lynch, 2006).

One of the issues that characterise any empirical comparisons of the Internet with other media as quality news sources is the questionable presumption that is invariably made in this research that the Internet represents a single ‘medium’. It might be more accurate to consider the Internet as a conduit through which news from a range of sources can flow. Significant quantities of the news content available online are provided by mainstream (offline) news organisations. Virtually every major news broadcaster and newspaper has a presence on the World Wide Web. They maintain online versions of their offline outputs and news story content is shared between these different media.

What may be more significant to news consumers in judging the credibility of news outputs is the particular supplier of that content and their reputation in the news production business. This principle can be expected to apply regardless of the medium in which a particular news supplier is operating. One finding that undermines even this observation, however, is that professional journalists have acknowledged that within specific news organisations less attention and less resource are devoted to online news than to offline news. This inevitably means that online news can lack the quality of offline news produced by the same newsroom (Arant and Anderson,2000).

A further distinguishing characteristic of the Internet as news supplier is that it is accompanied by the tools that allow ordinary news consumers to become news providers or publishers. Ordinary Internet users without any professional training can become ‘citizen journalists’. If the outputs of these amateurs are taken into account alongside other professional news outputs, to what extent do they match in terms of the standards of journalism they both observe? There is some concern that amateur online news producers could undermine the overall standing of the profession (Ruggiero,2004).

If the Internet is regarded as a repository of news rather than as a single news medium, then its reputation as a news source could depend upon the specific online sources news consumers utilise on a regular basis and the reputations of those sources as credible news suppliers. There is evidence from a number of different samples of Internet users that trust in online news is closely associated with the news ‘brand’ being used (Center for the Digital Future,2005). Not surprisingly, the brands that are trusted the most are those with established reputations as news suppliers in the offline world (Rainie, Fox and Fallows, 2003).

Importance of news brands

News brands are probably more central to trust in sources than perceptions of different media. The public’s trust in news suppliers can vary both in the offline and online worlds. Thus, not every television news broadcaster commands the same degree of trust even though television has consistently been voted as the most important and trusted news medium (Gunter, 2006a). In the online news world, the most trusted news sources tend to be those with established credibility reputations in the offline world (Gunter, 2006a). The gap between the Internet and television in terms of public trust may be narrowing. By 2005, for instance, research among news consumers in the United States found little difference in the extent to which the Internet and television were voted as news sources people could trust most of the time (Consumer Reports Web Watch,2005). It is difficult to interpret findings such as this, however, because comparisons between media may depend on experiences with specific news ‘brands’. As more prominent news brands have a presence in offline and online worlds, one might expect credibility perceptions of the Internet and other media as news sources to become more similar. There is evidence that important distinctions are made by news consumers between online news supplied by known and reputable sources and by unknown, independent sources. The latter command limited trust, while the former may be widely trusted (Center for the Digital Future,2005).

Trust in news media is related to which news media are used. There is a tendency for people to trust those media they use most often. Even so, there is accompanying evidence that Internet users exhibit more trust in Internet news than television viewers exhibit in televised news (Abdullah et al., 2005).

The importance of news brands has emerged in comparisons of perceptions of the Internet and television as news platforms. Findings reported earlier for the UK indicated that television (36%) was three times as likely as the Internet (12%) to be rated as an impartial information source by British media consumers (Ofcom, 2007b). When the impartiality of branded news sources on television was rated, the gap between television sources and the Internet grew wider. BBC1 was rated as impartial by nearly five times as many people (54%) as the Internet. ITV finished nearly four times ahead (41%). Other television channels such as Channel 4 (19%) and Five (13%) were rated similarly to the Internet in terms of their perceived impartiality.

The latter television versus Internet comparisons are probably questionable, however, and unfair to the Internet. One reason for this is that the Internet is not a single news source but a platform that conveys news from many branded news sources. A more realistic and certainly fairer comparison would have invited media consumers to evaluate news provided by specific news brands both on television and online.

Pinning down media consumers’ perceptions about the impartiality of televised news even further, Ofcom (2007b) reported findings from another survey operated by the BBC in which viewers gave their opinions about specific televised news programmes they had watched. Within this more restricted frame of reference, televised news was rated as very or fairly impartial by overwhelming majorities of viewers on BBC1 (92%), ITV (91%), Channel 4 (94%) and Five (89%). These finding demonstrate the importance of creating common frames of reference for survey respondents when measuring their perceptions of the qualities of different news sources. Viewers’ ratings of television channels could be based on a variety of different experiences with those channels. They might also be shaped by prejudices associated with particular news brands. By focusing evaluations on specific news outputs, survey respondents’ attention is directed towards their immediate content-related experiences rather than a more generic memory of experiences.

Concluding remarks

Television has held on to top spot as the consistently nominated most important source of news for mass publics from the early years of its lifespan. Although challenged by newspapers in respect of local news, for news that has wider significance on a national or international scale, it is to television that people usually say they first turn for the most up-to- date, accurate and believable information (Gunter et al., 1994; Towler,2003). As the television marketplace has become more crowded, however, evidence started to emerge that its news broadcasts were losing audiences (Hargreaves and Thomas,2002). Although viewers were still singing its praises in opinion polls, they tuned in less and less to televised news.

As television news experienced audience losses, the Internet steamed ahead with rapid penetration of populations around the world and emerged as a very useful and convenient news source in its own right. It also started to appear in news source opinion polls among the important news sources being nominated by media consumers (Findahl, 2008 Ofcom, 2007b). Whether it was actually displacing television news, however, was thrown open to doubt (Alexander and Cunningham,2007).

Although there is as yet little evidence of significant market displacement of televised news by news on the Internet, there can be no denying that it has begun to display ‘tipping point’ levels of endorsement (10–25%) among large survey samples (Moskalyuk,2004) and even higher levels of endorsement among Internet users (Reuters, 2009).

All is not lost for televised news. It retains high credibility ratings among the public (Gunter, 2005b) while the Internet, as a medium, has not yet captured the same level of public trust (Ofcom, 2007b). At times when major news events break, television is the medium people switch to first (Ofcom, 2007c). Even so, news websites associated with top news brands have experienced significant user growth (Ofcom, 2007d 2007e). This is perhaps a key point. It is more helpful to examine the use of news in relation to branded suppliers rather than in simple television versus Internet terms. Major news suppliers operate across technology platforms. The biggest brands in the online world tend to be ones that are also the biggest in the offline world. There are some exceptions, but they by no means dominate the news supply and consumption on the Internet.

Functional distinctiveness will often persist between televised news and Internet news to ensure that there is room for both. This may be defined in terms of the nature of news provision, for instance when mainstream news operations in the offline world ignore or play down stories that deserve more attention, leaving Internet sources such as news bloggers to pick up these stories and run with them instead (Allan,2006). News consumers may also elect to switch to the Internet where they perceive a supply of news to exist that fits better than that available on television with their own news needs or judgements about news credibility (Choi et al.,2006).

The expanded choice of news on the Internet and its ability to provide access to large quantities of regularly updated information from a wide range of sources will enhance its reputation as a news source. The on-demand facility of online news could also strike another nail in the coffin of television channel structures, with even 24-hour news channels unable to provide the flexibility of coverage and reception of the Internet.