The Wall Street Journal topped the list in the survey by Euro RSCG Worldwide, while The New York Times could only scrape a tied second place with USA Today and MSNBC.com, but at least the paper is more trusted than Oprah and right-wing commentator Bill O'Reilly, who came jointly last.
Last week, The New York Times promoted columnist and senior writer Bill Keller to the post of editor, filling the gap left by the departure of Howell Raines, who quit in May following the Jayson Blair scandal earlier this year.
Blair quit on May 1 after he was exposed for filing stories from his Brooklyn apartment while pretending to be away on assignments, and plagiarising the work of other journalists. As well as Raines and Boyd, the magazine lost one of its top reporters Rick Bragg, who quit over the use of unaccredited freelance journalists.
The survey also found that Americans trust cable news networks CNN and Fox slightly more than they trust national network TV news and considerably more than they trust national feature magazines such as People and Vanity Fair.
The survey was looking at gossip and found that it is such a guilty pleasure that men and women alike have a hard time admitting they indulge in it.
Of the 1,016 American adults polled, 75% agreed that "Americans are obsessed with Hollywood gossip" and 74% believe "Americans adore personal scandals such as JFK's alleged affairs or a celebrity in jail".
But when it came time to count themselves among the gossip-lovers, respondents tended toward denial. Just 17% of the sample admitted to being interested in Hollywood gossip and only 14% said they were interested in celebrity gossip.
Similarly, while 38% said that Americans are obsessed with gossip about the British Royal Family, only 10% counted themselves in that group, and while 37% declared that Americans were obsessed with Washington gossip, just 8% said that they follow these stories.
The survey also had bad news for President Bush who faces re-election next year. It found that more Americans, and not just young Americans, found greater truth in the lyrics of Eminem than President Bush's speeches.
"This survey confirms the remarkable power of person-to-person communication," Marian Salzman, chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG Worldwide and co-author of the newly released 'Buzz: Harness the Power of Influence and Create Demand', said. "The most trustworthy information source of all? Restaurant reviews from friends. After that: local news. This tells us that while people may take information from nationally branded media sources, it's not credible until they process it themselves -- until they convert it to buzz."
Exactly half of the adults polled believe that the old maxim that "women gossip more than men" still holds true. And, tellingly, more female than male respondents agreed with this perception 52% against 47%.
However, the truth is somewhat different, with 64% of men compared with just 44% of women saying they loved hearing about the latest scandals and celebrity doings. By contrast, the survey found that 53% of the women, compared with just 35% of the men, agreed that "Gossip and especially anything to do with celebrities is boring".
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