For all of the challenges in a struggling economy and digital transformation, one would expect a core competence of the media to remain an ability to explain issues. It is, after all, what people are trained to do.

But a new study from the United Kingdom suggests an emerging failing of mainstream media is that the public doesn't feel issues are being explained properly and clearly. That's quite the indictment.

The report, published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, is written by British academics who researched the public's attitudes and practices with media. The rise of the Internet permits interaction and new involvement, which confers a greater power for the audience, but difficulties remain for mainstream (read: legacy) media in properly explaining issues.

Clearly, too, the decision-making of mainstream media left people bewildered.

"When we encountered distrust in the news—which we frequently did—it was because people felt that their expectations were not shared by news producers; that they were being told stories that were not properly explained; that their lives were being reported in ways that were not adequately researched; or that they
could find more useful, reliable or amusing information elsewhere." the report says.

"Public trust in the media was lost when they were imagined and approached in
ways that ignored or devalued their everyday experiences."

New research on media consumption from the Ketchum Public Relations firm indicates peer-to-peer authority is strengthening and top-down legacy media authority is weakening.

Legacy media consumption as an information source is dropping --- not precipitously, but gradually, with the lone exception last year in the U.S. being cable news (unsurprising, given the presidential race).

The survey of 1,000 also found a diminution of search and the rise of companies directly reaching audiences.

"Social syndication tools, journalist blogs and email remain powerful tools for publishers. But just as appointment television is becoming a relic of last century's mass media model, all forms of content will need to move into evolving usage paths," says MinOnline in reporting the study.

A new study from  MS & L suggests 84 per cent of those who are influential in digital media go online to find out more about topics after they've heard or read about it in traditional media.

The study examined green, beauty and health information and found that traditional media often propelled digital.

This finding is hardly surprising, but well worth reinforcing: The ground troops of newsgathering (not the eyewitnesses, but the reporters and analysts) remain in legacy media and the digital media are more fledgling and smaller. It stands to reason that so-called old drives so-called new.