Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has undertaken a pretty heavyweight piece of research (6 continents, 40 different countries) into how the world’s population consumes its news. The majority of the research was undertaken pre-pandemic which means a fair comparison can be made between this year’s and previous years’ data. However, as the COVID-19 lockdown took hold, they also added a selection of additional sample groups, in order to appreciate if and how the virus was changing habits.
As the foreward summarises,
“The seriousness of this crisis has reinforced the need for reliable, accurate journalism that can inform and educate populations, but it has also reminded us how open we have become to conspiracies and misinformation. Journalists no longer control access to information, while greater reliance on social media and other platforms give people access to a wider range of sources and ‘alternative facts’, some of which are at odds with official advice, misleading, or simply false.”
The report highlights that the need for quality news comes at a time when publishers are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain revenues and will need to look online to create deeper and stronger connections with their audiences.
The main findings
- News consumption increased as coronavirus took hold. There was a strong spike in television news and online but printed media declined due to the issues around physical distribution. In the UK, the Prime Minister’s address telling Britons to stay at home was one of the most-watched broadcasts in UK television history and nightly viewership of BBC TV bulletins was up by around 30% in March. This was also reflected in visits to the BBC website.
- During lockdown, online news consumption grew significantly with over half of people surveyed saying they are part of an open or closed network/group to share and consume news information, often in their local area.
- During April, the trust in the media’s coverage of COVID-19 was high.
- However, in the earlier January poll, trust in the media was on the wane: less than four in ten (38%) said they trust most news most of the time – a fall of four percentage points from 2019. Trust in the UK media is considerably lower than in other countries:
