Broad topics we might want to look at

How about something along the lines of "How much do you trust the opinions of the people you get your news from"? That might capture people who find themselves easily swayed by stuff they see on TV, and would probably do a pretty good job of capturing people who actively resist media opinions...

As far as perceptions vs. reality goes, yeah, I don't see the value of people's beliefs as to how much they're influenced so much, but I think their perceptions could be useful as far as how good a job each type of media does (i.e. "How good a job do you think the following types of media in B.C. do?" TV (1-5) Newspapers (1-5) etc.)

Obviously a *huge* topic, and really we might even like to break it down to the specific news services (CBC, Province, Vancouver Sun, Global/CTV/whatever other news channels we have etc. etc.), but that could get unwieldy and boring fast...