MOSCOW (Sputnik), Yulia Shamporova — The comments come following the release of an ICM Research survey earlier in the day, conducted exclusively for Sputnik, revealing that 60 percent of European and US citizens wanted to receive information on global events from alternative news outlets.
"I think that this is a world-wide phenomenon and everybody takes what they hear, and what they read, and what they see with a 'pinch of salt,'" Aidan Stradling, Director of the Anglo-Russian Center in North East England, told Sputnik.
Jean-Yves Camus, Political Analyst and an associate research fellow at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) in France told Sputnik that he consults several media outlets, including Russian news agencies and television channels, after reading French news.
However, "common people consume French TV channels and the way they present the situation," the expert stated.
"We have a very serious concentration of the media in France and there are fewer and fewer independent magazines or press-groups in the country," Camus told Sputnik, adding that even if people get news from several French outlets, the information will be the same as all are members of the same media group.
The poll, conducted by ICM Research for Sputnik, revealed that less than half of French citizens would like to have an alternative to Western mainstream media news coverage, the lowest figure compared to the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Greece.
"The development of news organizations and international news agencies in different parts of the world is going to be very valuable. A pluralization of media sources would be a very valuable thing in order to provide people with more objective information," Meera Sabaratnam, a lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies of School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, told Sputnik.
Russia's relations with the West deteriorated amid the Ukrainian crisis, with many US and European media outlets covering the events in the country in a one-sided way.
An earlier ICM poll published in April revealed that 54 percent of respondents in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Greece did not trust the mainstream media's coverage of the conflict in Ukraine's southeast.
