COVID continues to cast a dark cloud over the health of our communities, but a new report has said it has also hastened the demise of printed newspapers and accelerated the shift to digital.
The 10th Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) is based on data from six continents and 46 markets, and aims to cast light on the key issues for the industry at a time of deep uncertainty and rapid change.
However, report author Nic Newman (below), a senior research associate at RISJ, said the new business models such as subscription and membership have not come anywhere near making up for lost income elsewhere.
“This crisis has also shown the value of accurate and reliable information at a time when lives are at stake,” said Newman.
“In many countries we see audiences turning to trusted brands – in addition to ascribing a greater confidence in the media in general. The gap between the ‘best and the rest’ has grown, as has the trust gap between the news media and social media.”
Polling for the study was carried out when the UK and Ireland were in full lockdown, the US and Brazil were under state-by-state rules and Australia, Taiwan and Japan were mostly free of internal restrictions.
While common patterns are hard to discern, Newman said western Europe provided a good case study of how different countries have been badly and collectively affected.
He said: “Across a number of European countries we find that consumption of television news is significantly higher than a year ago when no restrictions on movement were in place.
“This is not surprising, given that so many people have been stuck at home, but has reaffirmed the importance of a medium that is accessible, easy to consume, reaches a wide range of demographics, and is mostly well trusted.”
He said 24-hour news channels such as Sky News (which rose by five percentage points) in the UK and n-tv in Germany (+6) were among the brands to have benefited.
“In the UK, the proportion selecting TV news as main source [of news] was up to 36% (+7) and in Ireland 41% (+8). In both countries we see increased TV reliance across age groups, though older people, of course, still have a much greater underlying preference for TV news.
“It would be wrong to over-emphasise any temporary bump in TV consumption given the longer term shift towards digital sources but it is a reminder of the continuing draw of video-based storytelling as well as the strength of traditional news brands.
“But perhaps the most striking finding around consumption has been the extent to which people have placed a premium on reliable news sources in general, not just on TV.”
However, Newman said the report also exposed “worrying inequalities” in consumption and trust with “the young, women, people from ethnic minorities, and political partisans often feeling less fairly represented by the media”.
The report said trust in the news has grown, on average, by six percentage points in the wake of the pandemic with 44% of the total sample saying they trust most news most of the time – to some extent, reversing recent falls in average trust bringing levels back to those of 2018.
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