The Reuters Institute For The Study Of Journalism released its latest Digital News Report earlier this week which polled more than 92,000 consumers in 46 markets about digital news consumption. As well as looking into the pandemic's impact on news consumption and the future prospects of digital publishers, the research also looked at the progress of paid online business models, local news, impartiality, fairness and notably, trust and misinformation. Regarding the latter, the report found that overall trust in the news has actually rebounded strongly over the past year in nearly all countries analyzed with half of people across the 46 markets trusting the news.
Out of all countries in the report, Finland had the highest share of respondents agreeing that "you can trust news most of the time" at 65%, a nine percentage point increase since the last edition of the report. The United States, which was the epicenter of the fake news storm during Trump's tumultuous four-year stint in the White House, was one of the countries that made little progress since the last edition of the report. This time around, it is rock bottom of the trust league with just 29% of respondents agreeing "you can trust the news most of the time".
The report states that the increase in trust in the news across the board might be attributable to extensive coverage of Covid-19, which may have had the effect of making the news seem more straightforward and fact-based, as well as having the added caveat of pushing partisan politics off of the main agenda. According to the report, the United States has remained an exception following deep divisions over an allegedly stolen election, as well as the aftermath of George Floyd's killing. In the United States, there are actually more people who distrust the news than trust it.
*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)
% agreeing "you can trust news most of the time" in selected countries in 2021.
