Trust me - I'm British

An entertaining survey of close to 9,000 Americans carried out by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri places a number of British sources at the top of a league table of "most trusted". The Economist heads the list, with Reuters in third, the BBC fourth and The Guardian seventh. "Public Television", which comes in second, often carries BBC bulletins.

The sample is a little self-selecting, and there's probably a lot of serious news junkies in there, asked to list their three most trusted and three least trusted providers. The big networks, CBS, ABC and NBC are all clustered just the wrong side of the middle.