WASHINGTON -- The number of Americans reading news on the Internet at least once a week has more than tripled in the past two years, according to a survey released on Monday.
But people who go online for news do not appear to cut their consumption from other sources such as newspapers and television, the Pew Research Center said.
The center's survey of 3,002 adults, conducted by telephone between 24 April and 11 May, found that 20 percent of them went online for news at least once a week, against 6 percent in 1996 and 4 percent in 1995.
That translates into about 36 million people in the United States in 1998, compared with 11 million in 1996, it said.
"The survey gives no evidence that going online for news leads to less reading or viewing of more traditional news sources," the survey reported. "People who go online for news say that their news habits are unchanged. Analysis of the polling confirms this, in finding that their news consumption patterns do not differ significantly from (those of) nonusers."
The survey suggested that despite the increasing use of the Internet, cable television news remained more influential.
Forty percent of Americans now regularly watch one of the cable news networks, against 57 percent for the network news, the dominant medium for several decades.
"Americans say they would turn to cable channels first in the event of a big news story, whether it concerned politics, health, or sports," the Pew Research Centre said.
But almost half of Americans -- 46 percent -- do not follow national news at all unless a major story breaks. Local news has a bigger following -- 61 percent of Americans keep up with it most of the time, the survey said.
The survey claims accuracy within plus or minus 2.5 percent.
