News Credibility Scale

Credibility has been widely researched in the news media sector of the communication field. The Newspaper Credibility factor explained 37% of the total variance, whereas the first TV Credibility factor explained 38% of the total variance. The News Credibility Scale takes less than 5 minutes to complete. One might expect credibility to lead to more frequent use of a selected medium. In their secondary analysis of the American Society of Newspaper Editors data, though, T. Rimmer and D. Weaver found that frequency of media exposure did not relate to media credibility. They did note that media choice or preference showed “some weak associations with the credibility measures”. They suggested the need to separate measures of frequency and measures of media preference or media reliance. Rimmer and Weaver also argued that affective or attitudinal media-use measures can confound relationships with media credibility perceptions.