The Relationship of Perceived Media Credibility, Media Preference, and Television News Films.

An effort was made in this study to determine whether the absence or presence of news film in a television news segment influences a believability or preference judgment made by a respondent when comparing a television report directly with a newspaper report of the same event. One hundred eight students at Temple University viewed one of two videotapes contained eight news reports--four included film and four did not for each tape--and read one newspaper account of each of the eight events. Results showed that television reports with film were consistently more preferred than newspaper reports, but newspaper reports were not consistently more preferred than television reports without film. Results concerning media credibility showed that television reports with film were generally more believed than newspaper reports, and that newspaper reports were generally more believed than television reports without film. Results tended to show that the effect of the use of news film--particularly for believability--depends to some extent on story content. The finding is consistent with results obtained in prior studies of media believability. (Author/RB)