Ensuring accuracy of information has always been an important aspect of media credibility, but what about spelling and grammar? Researchers recently explored the impact of spelling and grammar error rates on credibility.
Park Beede, assistant professor in the College of Communication and Media Sciences at Zayed University, and Michael W. Mulnix, adjunct professor of marketing in the School of Business and Informational Technology at Kaplan University, examined spelling and grammar errors among leading news sources in online media and studied the association between error rates and reported trust in those sources. The authors examined CNN, Fox News, USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Huffington Post.
The findings confirm the occurrence of spelling and grammar error rates across all news sources as ranging between 10 percent and 15 percent. The lowest error rate was of Fox News with 5 percent. The researchers then compared error rates by news source with corresponding perceived trustworthiness as reported by the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel. In comparing error rates among news sources with corresponding perceptions of trust as reported in the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, a moderately significant association was observed overall.
To read the full study:
Beede, P., & Mulnix, M. W. (2017). Grammar, spelling error rates persist in digital news. Newspaper Research Journal, 38 (3), 316-327.
