So says a poll by the Associated Press and National Constitution Center that was released Thursday (toplines pdf here). Of course, they didn’t ask them if they knew what a blog was!
But then again, it seems there is not much confidence in anything.
Out of 18 fixtures on the American scene, none won the strong faith of even half the country. The military did best with 43 percent saying they are extremely or very confident in it, and small business and science were the only others to garner solid trust from at least 3 in 10 people.
On the flip side, 54 percent said they have little or no confidence in blogs and other citizen media, 52 percent said the same about banks and financial firms and 49 percent said so about Congress
One of the few positives in the poll: 58 percent said that same-sex couples should have the same government benefits as married heterosexuals and 52% said the federal government should recognize gay marriage.
Times, they are a-changin’
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
If I were given a multiple choice question about the trustworthiness of blogs, I’d demand to be allowed to answer “it depends”. Like pretty much every mode of communication that has popped up on the Internet, blogs are overwhelming in number and, in the aggregate, have a pretty low signal-to-noise ratio. There is valuable stuff out there, but it takes digging to find it; and of course, what is valuable is going to differ from one person to the next.
No worries — I don’t trust polls! 😉
I mean, I trust SOME blogs, but I distrust a lot more than 54% of them.
Unless we include blogs about things other than politics or current events. In that case I’ve found some fantastic dessert recipes on SprinkleBakes.com which I would recommend to anyone without hesitation. I’d trust SprinkleBakes with my life, at least culinarily-speaking.
Actually, come to think of it, I’d trust it for reliable political insight more than I’d trust a lot of political blogs, too.
I have to admit: I’m surprised the number on blogs isn’t higher. And in many (most?) cases, it should be.
To make that number on blogs meaningful, we need to know what percentage trust the professional media.
Little or no confidence:
– print media – 38%
– broadcast media – 39%
– online media – 34%
Hmmm, so aside from blogs, they distruct TV news the most…that’s very astute of the poll respondents.;-)
Clearly, those polled hadn’t frequented THIS blog!