Journalists' credibility holding steady at 99-plus, for now!

While Digg and other online news aggregators use popularity to recommend articles, the new site NewsCred asks users to rate the credibility of the article, the journalist, the news org and even the news sources by choosing "credit" or "discredit." The users' reactions combine to yield a rating between 1 and 100. Public input has been limited because the site just graduated from alpha to public beta stage on Tuesday, and all of the rated media are scoring north of 99 points (NPR is at 99.12, a point above right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin). But that can't last. NewsCred kicks off its press release with statistics indicating that most Americans distrust journalism. The website, based in Geneva, Switzerland, was started by Iraj Islam and Shafqat Islam, described as a web programmer from Sweden and a former Wall Street technology exec. TechCrunch covered the debut.