Trust In Journalism Rising, Be Happy, Be Grateful

Michael Hedges June 28, 2021 - Follow on Twitter

Trust is the overarching factor in public support for news media. This has been clear for years. It’s also quite logical. That no reader, listener or viewer would support - however that is defined - a repellant news outlet. This is similar to the common understanding that nobody would ride in a vehicle with wheels constantly falling off. There are caveats to every side of this argument.

Thoroughly analysing this is the latest Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Data was collected from 46 countries, including for the first time Columbia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Peru and Thailand. A top point made by lead author Nic Newman in the report’s summary is “how differently the news environment operates outside the United States and Europe.” The coronavirus pandemic, of course, “continues to cast a dark cloud.”

Trust in the news media, across the report’s broadest purview, has bumped up a bit, averaging 44% among the entire sample. YouGov collected data for the report in January and February, in many countries the apex of pandemic lockdowns and related concerns, which the authors suggest may have contributed to rising trust in the news media by replacing partisan political news. The exception, of course, is the United States, referred to as “a special case.”

The Digital News Report, published annually for a decade, focuses on the impact of digital media on the whole of news publishing. The current report notes that “trust in news from search and social has remained broadly stable,” suggesting a “trust gap” of “a greater premium on accurate and reliable news sources.” Increased online reach correlates positively, but weakly, with higher trust within a subset of Western European countries. “The pattern is less clear outside Western Europe, in countries where the coronavirus crisis has dominated the media agenda less, or where other political and social issues have played a bigger role.”

Without surprise, Finland’s news media are the world’s most trusted. About two-thirds of all Finns expressed confidence in news reporting from outlets generally, up 9% year on year. This is attributed to high trust in traditional news media outlets, particularly public broadcaster YLE and daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. Of the 20% of Finns subscribing to digital media, just under 50% pay for access to Helsingin Sanomat. YLE is supported through a public service tax. Trust in institutions generally is high in Finland, corruption perception is low and Finns have been noted as the happiest in the world for the last four years by the United Nations Sustainable Development Network.

Scandinavian countries Norway, Sweden and Denmark along with Austria and Ireland reported increased levels of trust in their news media. Audience reach among traditional well-known news brands in these countries also increased. The Digital News Report suggests the the embrace of digital platforms by publishers and broadcasters “complimented” the increased reach and trust as readers, listeners and viewers found greater access to news.

Many public broadcasters, the report notes, have seen trust assessments rise in the last year as digital offerings expanded information capacities. National audience estimates throughout the last year have shown steadily increasing reach despite criticism from populist, nativist governments and like-minded publishers. In 2019 the former right-wing government in Denmark moved forward with drastic budget cuts to public broadcaster DR. Public outcry against the measure became an election issue and the government changed hands. According to the Digital News Report, current trust in news on DR is 82% of the population.

In the United States, the report’s “special case,” trust in news is the lowest among the 46 countries surveyed, 29%. That percentage is unchanged from the 2020 report. Interest in news, something different, declined to 55% from 66% one year on. The Digital News Report notes that 2021 data was collected in the US after the January 6 assault on the US Capital by right-wing extremists. “Our data show signs that many former Trump supporters may be switching away from news altogether. Almost all of this fall in interest came from those on the political right.”

The easy availability of highly partisan social and online platforms may have also contributed to the decline in trust. “Political partisans, especially on the right, trust the news much less and also do not feel news organizations cover their views fairly,” said Reuters Institute director Rasmus Kleis Nielsen to Rick Edmonds at Poynter (June 24). “It’s hard to see how news media can win people’s trust if they often have only a few, fleeting points of contact with them, frequently mediated by social media, an environment people generally do not associate with trustworthy news.”

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