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Over the course of the Internet Project's eight years, users feel the credibility of the overall
web  has dropped.  The drop has been incremental year  to year,  but significant over eight
years.  As people are confronted by web sites posted by individuals and news organizations
with which they might not be familiar, the importance of "brand" news from well-known orga-
nizations  continues to be  quite important.   In 2003, we began  asking users  their feelings
about  the credibility of web sites posted by established off-line news organizations, such as
the New York Times  and CNN.  While only about half of those surveyed felt that most or all
of the information on the web was reliable,  beginning in 2003  74%  felt that the sites of tra-
ditional  media organizations  were credible.  As blogs and user-generated content of some-
times questionable reliability proliferated,  the importance of branded media,  sometimes a
short-cut  to credibility,  increased.  By 2007  80% of people on the web felt that most or all
of the information posted by well-known off-line news sources was reliable and accurate.