Strategies for building trust in news : what the public say they want across four countries

Banerjee, Sayan and Mont'Alverne, Camila and Arguedas, Amy Ross and Toff, Benjamin and Fletcher, Richard and Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis (2023) Strategies for building trust in news : what the public say they want across four countries. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. (https://doi.org/10.60625/risj-2pym-4a08)

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Abstract

What does the public want and expect from news media when it comes to trustworthy journalism? For the last three years, the Reuters Institute’s Trust in News Project has investigated this question through a mix of survey research, in-depth qualitative interviews and focus groups, and other techniques, examining audience attitudes across the Global South (Brazil and India) and Global North (the United Kingdom and the United States). One of our most consistent findings has been the degree to which the answer to this question varies not only across countries but within these diverse and pluralistic societies. While there are facets of news that people across these markets often share in common – most, for example, say they want and expect coverage to be fair, accurate, and impartial – what is likely to increase trust for some groups in practice may only undermine it for others, since perceptions around what is fair, accurate, and impartial are often subjective and shaped by broader preconceptions many hold about what it is that journalists do. That makes adopting effective solutions particularly complex. In this report we focus our attention squarely on the question of what news organisations could do to respond to declining trust, a growing trend in many places around the world (Newman et al. 2023), and the varying ways in which different groups in these countries think about these strategies. Through a new round of survey data collected across these four countries, we focus on what the public says is likely to work (and not work) to rebuild their trust where it has broken down, or cultivate it where it has never taken root. Although we acknowledge there is a wide gap between saying one is open to various trust-building strategies in the abstract and whether such approaches will work in practice in the real world – especially given the variety of rival concerns and interests competing for the public’s attention – empirical evidence about what people say they want is an essential piece of the puzzle when it comes to formulating effective solutions. As has been a guiding principle throughout this project, we believe it is critical to take what the public says they want seriously rather than, as is often the case, for journalists and publishers to rely solely on their own intuitions when it comes to how best to move forward – however much of that intuition may be in alignment with what their audiences tell them. After all, news organisations are far more likely to hear from those at the extremes, who already trust them or likely never will, than the far larger segment of the public who are often far less interested in what it is that journalists do than in how their work can make their lives better – or at least not worse.

ORCID iDs

Banerjee, Sayan, Mont'Alverne, Camila ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6100-4879, Arguedas, Amy Ross, Toff, Benjamin, Fletcher, Richard and Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)