Media credibility: collapse in the US and Italy according to Reuters research
Trust in the news has declined in many countries around the world, especially after the Covid affair first saw an increase, then a fall, in credibility from the world's major media.
That's according to Reuters Institute 's Digital News Report 2022, which surveyed 93,000 consumers in 46 markets on a range of digital news topics, ranging from perceptions of media coverage of the war in Ukraine to changing habits of younger consumers. , to searching for climate news.
Overall confidence in the news declined in 21 of the 46 markets analysed, while 18 markets remained at a similar level and only seven saw an increase. Here is the related infographic:
Finland had the highest percentage of respondents agreeing that 'the news can be trusted most of the time' (69%), an increase of 4 percentage points since the last edition of the report. The US has made little progress and is still at the bottom of the table, along with Slovakia, with just 26% of people trusting the news most of the time – a 3 percentage point drop from last year.
In Latin America, confidence decreased in Brazil (-6 percentage points) and Colombia (-3) in February 2022, but remained at the same level or improved slightly in other countries. Among the African countries analysed, South Africa (+9) and Nigeria (+4) recorded improvements, while Kenya recorded a decrease (-4). In Asia, confidence in news declined in Malaysia (-5) and Taiwan (-4), but increased in the Philippines (+5) and Japan (+2).
It's Italy? As far as our country is concerned, the number of people who follow the news (35%) is almost equal to the one who avoids it (34%). The 2021 equivalent research saw media credibility at 40% , so we have a significant drop of 5%, which is very significant and should make anyone in this industry wonder. Here are two infographics that show first of all how many believe in the news and how many don't.
Here is the percentage of those who avoid the news:
France and Spain trust the media even less than Italy, while credibility is much higher in Northern European countries. Here is the credibility ranking of the individual Italian media
According to the report, while the majority of people across all countries remain engaged and use the news regularly, countries with the lowest level of trust in the news, such as the US (26%), the UK (34%) , France (29%) and Slovakia (26%), also tend to experience some of the highest levels of selective avoidance and declining interest in news. Among the reasons cited for selective news avoidance – the choice to ration or limit the export of news or certain types of news – include being discouraged by the repetitiveness of the news agenda, feeling news-weary, as well as the fact that they lower the mood, lead to feelings of helplessness, are too difficult to understand or cannot be trusted, among other things.
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The article Media credibility: collapse in the USA and Italy according to Reuters research comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/credibilita-dei-media-crollo-negli-usa-e-in-italia-secondo-la-ricerca-reuters/ on Sat, 27 May 2023 09:00:04 +0000.