Subjectivity in media source perception: Fox news versus NPR

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The purpose of this study is to explore the link between political affinity and source credibility perception through the cases of Fox News and NPR. Based on the third-person perception framework, this study combines the Q methodology and focus group interviews to investigate the interaction of audience and source in shaping the credibility of a media source. Results confirmed the third-person perception in that audiences tend to perceive a politically aligned news channel as being trustworthy, but fails to attain the social impact it deserves. In contrast, audiences perceive a hostile news channel as having social impact although not being trustworthy.</jats:p>