A survey from the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute shows that most of the most trusted news sources in America are British.

Market Watch:

The most trusted news source in the U.S. is The Economist – a weekly magazine published in the U.K., according to a recent survey from the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute.

The second-most reliable is public television, followed by Reuters and BBC. Two U.S. nonprofit outlets, NPR and PBS, came in at fifth and sixth, while the U.K.'s The Guardian clinched the seventh spot. The U.S.-based Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News rounded out the top 10 trusted names in journalism.

The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp. NWS, -0.34% NWSA, -0.91%  the parent of MarketWatch.

At the other extreme, Occupy Democrats – a political website with a self-claimed agenda of counterbalancing the Republican Tea Party – won the dubious honor of being the most untrustworthy in the nation. Buzzfeed, Breitbart and Infowars also scored dismally on the trust-meter.

The results were based on a survey of more than 8,000 people conducted by 28 media organizations in the U.S. Participation was voluntary but respondents tended to reside near the news outlets that made the questionnaire available on their websites, and leaned toward the liberal side of the political spectrum.

The survey also showed that politically liberal respondents were more trusting than conservatives, while Caucasians were more likely than non-whites to have confidence in the media.

First, this survey is little better than an online poll, as the breakdown of the ideological tilt of respondents shows.

It's not surprising, then, that mostly liberal English media would be more trustworthy than even the New York Times or Washington Post.  What sets British media apart is a virulent, knee-jerk strain of anti-Americanism – even more so than is found in major media in the U.S.  Of course, that would appeal to many American liberals. 

It's noteworthy that the New York Times and Washington Post are trusted less than Politico and the AP.  The AP is supposed to be a wire service that reports the news factually and objectively.  But in recent years, it has become reflexively liberal.  This is serious, because so many local newspapers and TV stations rely on the AP for disseminating news – especially national and international stories.

Drudge is trusted about as much as NBC and CNN.  And even liberals apparently can't stomach the blind partisanship of Occupy Democrats.

We shouldn't read much into this survey, but it is helpful in understanding the point of view dominating the American news-consumer.