News that focuses on events and developments that affect the entire country, such as political scandals and major disasters. National news can be found on TV and radio programs, newspapers, magazines, online and social media sites and podcasts.
USA Today is one of the most recognizable newspaper brands in America. They rewrote the rules of journalism when they launched in 1982, replacing dense text with bold headlines and colorful graphics. They are a top five trusted news source for Americans.
In addition to local news, network television stations have their own nationally-focused newscasts that are geared to viewers in the specific geographic areas they serve (Designated Market Areas). The branding, studio design and on-air personalities of these national newscasts often differ from the respective networks they represent but most make some form of on-air reference to the parent networks.
NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News and ABC News all have well-known anchors – Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Peter Jennings of ABC. In the past decade, the face of network news changed dramatically as newer technologies made it possible for journalists to use digital video and audio cameras, record on hard drives and edit footage more easily than in film.
People who have recently used each of these outlets are more likely than Americans in general to deem them trustworthy. This could be because people have a better idea of the quality of these particular sources, because they are already familiar with them, or because the results of our latest poll show that the outlets have relatively stable levels of trust among Americans.
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