Government interference

I've belatedly found a wonderful survey from May last year on trust in the media. As usual, the relevant cross-tabs are buried behind several links. The juiciest information for my purposes comes with the agree/disagree responses to the statement, "The government interferes too much in the media in our country". The question isn't ideal for gauging the actual level of interference - one may think that there's a high level of government interference, but there should be more; or that there's a low level of interference, but there should be less still - but nonetheless, the results are useful.

(% Agree, government interferes too much):

1. Nigeria: 75%
2. South Korea: 71%
3. Brazil: 64%
4. Indonesia: 59%
5. United Kingdom: 58%
6. India: 56%
7. USA: 52%
8. Egypt: 49%
9. Russia: 49%
10. Germany: 32%

Surprisingly low positions for Russia and Egypt perhaps impaired by the low availability of alternatives. Where alternatives are available, as in South Korea (highest usage of internet as a news source worldwide), resentment at government interference seems to grow - although public broadcaster KBS is still the most trusted media brand, strangely enough.

For the record, 51% of Italians believe the government's influence on public broadcaster Rai to be excessive. Maybe Italians are equally bad judges of the richness of their media ecology as Russians and Egyptians seem to be.

Trust and politicians' ability to leave things be

As a sideline, I've been reading about trust in governing institutions. Does the political independence of broadcasters depend on whether politicians trust the broadcasters to report truthfully or accurately? If so, might existing low levels of trust prevent an improvement in the relationship?

Working through one wonderful article on LBJ's psychology, I came across the term 'sinister attribution error': "the tendency for individuals to overattribute hostile intentions and malevolent motives to others' actions". It struck me as a perfect description of Italian politicians' attitude towards television coverage, as essentially motivated by the grinding of partisan axes.

Unfortunately, the literature on trust suggests that phenomena like sinister attribution error are difficult to eradicate. As Diego Gambetta has written, low trust "prevents people from engaging in the appropriate kind of social experiment" necessary to invalidate false beliefs about the objects of distrust. So, LBJ was unable to check whether Bobby Kennedy though himself a threat to LBJ (he didn't) precisely because he thought Bobby Kennedy was a threat to LBJ.