And the Internet will only get more influential. Minorities — blacks and Hispanics (who are poised, together, to become a majority in the US) — say they find social-networking sites even more useful for keeping up on political news than whites; younger people (who will get older and find their views more prevalent as those who disagree expire) say so at a higher rate than all social-network users.
All of which is to say that if people mistrust the mainstream media now, and are increasingly seeking out alternative sources of information and finding it influential, those reporters and editors and managers whose jobs it is to make themselves truthful and useful to the public really have their work cut out for them.
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