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Participants were asked which one medium tends to be the most accurate. The resultshere tended to follow the results of use patterns with newspapers coming in first,followed by local TV news, and then a drop-off of sources clustered together with lessthan 10 percent of responses individually (see Table 5).Table 5. Perceptions of Most Accurate MediumFrequency Percent Valid PercentNewspapers 19 38.0 38.0Local TV News 10 20.0 20.0Radio News 5 10.0 10.0Cable TV News 4 8.0 8.0Magazines, news 4 8.0 8.0Internet sites 2 4.0 4.0Network TV News 2 4.0 4.0No reply 4 8.0 8.0Total 50 100.0 100.0CONCLUSIONSThe on-air local TV news sources responding to this survey generally found thestories involving them to be accurate. Only a few respondents noted either objectiveerrors or subjective flaws. The overall results neatly paralleled the Singletary/Lipskyfindings from 25 years earlier, including the rough proportions of respondents forentirely correct, generally correct, and largely incorrect. The proportion of objectiveversus subjective errors also was similar to the respondent complaints in theSingletary/Lipsky study.A few respondents vented traditional gripes about bias or sloppiness as the reasonsfor the errors. Market size did not appear to affect the number of reported errors.The idea that “familiarity builds contentment” found in past analyses of reportersourcerelations gained only partial support in this survey. Contact with the reporter orproducer led to fewer accuracy complaints, but not at statistically significant levels.However, sources did tend to validate indirectly their own media choices. In otherwords, sources who reported getting most of their news from newspapers also callednewspapers the most accurate. The same was true for radio, cable TV news, and theinternet, but not quite as pronounced for local TV news. Seventeen of the 50 sourcessaid they relied most on local TV news; seven of them said they also believed it is themost accurate medium for news, five said newspaper, two indicated cable TV, and oneeach for radio, network TV, and no answer. Local TV news also was found to be mostaccurate from two sources who said they relied most on cable TV news, and from onesource who gave multiple answers to the question “From which ONE medium do youtend to get most of your news?”One final methodological point should be made. Local TV news operations rapidlyare going to slick (often subcontracted) websites that do not offer full scripts. Sadly,this report may be one of the last using this resource to examine local television news.52Feedback April 2003 (Vol. 44, No. 2)