{"id":49271,"date":"2021-12-20T09:03:37","date_gmt":"2021-12-20T09:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/?p=49271"},"modified":"2021-12-21T10:28:31","modified_gmt":"2021-12-21T10:28:31","slug":"publishers-are-regaining-public-trust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/publishers-are-regaining-public-trust\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishers are regaining public trust"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Covid-19 afforded an opportunity to prove that the media was on the public\u2019s side. Organisations have been able to capitalise on the moment and win back some public support, everywhere except America. Peter Houston rounds up the year in trust\u00a0as part of our\u00a0Media Moments 2021 report<\/a>.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Trust in the media has been falling<\/a> since before we started writing our Media Moments reports in 2018, but the pandemic seems to have brought some respite. In almost all of the 46 countries examined in this year\u2019s Digital News Report<\/a> from the Reuters Institute, trust in the news media was up. It might be up because people needed news more during the pandemic, or maybe because the facts were easier to see, but it\u2019s up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geographical differences<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The proportion of people in the UK who said they trusted the news rose from 28% to 36%<\/a> in a year. Although still nowhere near the 50% trust ratings recorded before the Brexit referendum broke Britain, that\u2019s a big single-year increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one place trust in the media stayed low was America. Only 29% of Americans<\/a> claim to \u201ctrust most news most of the time\u201d, the lowest trust rating of the 46 countries studied for the 2021 Digital News Report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is hardly surprising given America\u2019s fractious political landscape. Political divisions<\/a> factor heavily in whether people trust the media; more than half of people who consider themselves left-leaning believe the media \u201ccover people with their political views fairly\u201d, compared with just 16% on the right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many reasons for falling public trust in the media, not least untrustworthy media. But increasing government attacks on the press, seen across the world, don\u2019t help. Inspired, or at least egged on by the press-baiting antics of Donald Trump, governments across the world have set themselves against journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Britain, the Conservative government wants to bring the BBC to heel.<\/a> Beijing effectively closed<\/a> a pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper. A Belarussian blogger was pulled from a plane<\/a> forced to land by fighter jets. And that\u2019s only the Bs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Time to rebuild<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Chronicling the causes of the declining trust in world media has become a full time job. From politically motivated slurs of \u2018Fake News\u2019 to the proliferation of misinformation peddled by bad actors, untrustworthy information is more visible, and more highlighted, than ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figuring out how to rebuild trust is also a full time job, with discussions about what to do raging across journalism schools, think tanks and newsrooms all around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some, it\u2019s all about a return to the facts. According to the Digital News Report, 66% of respondents want their news media to remain neutral and 74% believe reporting should highlight a range of views, rather than taking a position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For others it\u2019s about transparency. Following the BLM protests in 2020, a Bloomberg employee <\/a>is said to have remarked: \u2018Reporters are meant to be objective, but to many the distinction between right and wrong now seems obvious.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A significant minority \u2013 24% \u2013 want what they see as a \u2018fa\u00e7ade of neutrality\u2019 dropped, believing there are news topics where, \u201cit makes no sense to try to be neutral\u201d. Thinking of the reporting covering COVID and increasingly the Climate Crisis, this makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The INMA report, How News Brands Are Rebuilding Trust<\/a>, suggests that data from public surveys shows it is possible to rebuild trust, but that action is needed immediately. The report author is Sally Lehrman, founder of The Trust Project<\/a>, an international consortium of news organisations building standards of transparency and working with tech platforms to amplify journalism\u2019s commitment to transparency, accuracy, inclusion, and fairness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the core of the Trust project\u2019s work are eight trust indicators<\/a> that help determine the trustworthiness of a story. Lehrman believes that the pandemic has alerted more people to the value of accurate news and their own role in choosing it. She writes, \u201cThe news industry must connect even more deeply to the principles of social responsibility at journalism\u2019s heart and become the people\u2019s trusted, responsible, and responsive ally. We must do so not just for philosophical reasons, but for our very survival.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This survival sentiment is more than just an existential cry in support of ethical journalism; a line can be drawn directly between trust and monetisation. A Knight Foundation study<\/a> into how age impacts how Americans view the media shows that while older readers display brand loyalty, younger readers are more interested in accuracy and transparency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While 68% of the 18 \u2013 35 year olds surveyed said the news media is \u201ccritical\u201d to democracy, only 32% agreed a news organization\u2019s brand is very important. Consequently, they are more likely to look at other sources or independent fact-checking sites when they feel uncertain about facts in a news story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report sums up the prospects for future news providers perfectly: \u201cYoung Americans are responding to the changes in today\u2019s media environment with efforts to be more discerning news consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bottom line is, publishers that can\u2019t prove their trustworthiness through establishing the provenance of their content and the processes through which it is created, will face an uphill battle connecting with future audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article is an extract from our annual report, Media Moments 2021. For more on this chapter including case studies and key statistics,\u00a0download it now for free<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Covid-19 afforded an opportunity to prove that the media was on the public\u2019s side. Organisations have been able to capitalise on the moment and win back some public support, everywhere except America. Peter Houston rounds up the year in trust\u00a0as part of our\u00a0Media Moments 2021 report. Trust in the media has been falling since before we started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":49272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17612,26,550],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[2873,4871,1250,12168,1366,2615,4872,1769,10144,1449,1751,2840,10226,1470],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49271"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49271"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediamakersmeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=49271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}