Philippine media in transition: The effect of issue salience on credibility assessments

Abstract

A probability sample of 250 adults in the Philippines' Central Luzon region responded to personal interviews that asked to compare the credibility of today's media system with that which prevailed before the ouster of the Marcos regime in 1986; and to make assessments of how salient the agrarian reform issue is to them and to their families. It was then tested whether these salience estimates had any bearing on judgments of mass media credibility. The data provided support for a curvilinear relationship between extremity of issue salience and credibility of media coverage, but against the hypothesized direction: those who perceived the issue as either highly salient or of no salience to them gave higher credibility ratings to the media than those for whom agrarian reform was moderately salient.