The Reuters Institute of Journalism at the University of Oxford survey 92,000 “consumers of news” in 46 different nations to gauge how much each population trusts what they read or hear. The Institute just released a 164-page report titled Digital News Report 2021.
Notes: The Institute hired YouGov to do the actual polling. The Reuters Institute of Journalism is sponsored by George Soro’s Open Society Foundations, the British Broadcast Corporation, Google, and other sketchy, highly biased sources.
Here are some of the Institute’s findings:
Finland was ranked number one, with 65% trusting the media. American ranked dead last with only 29%. Meanwhile, 44% of Americans strongly distrust the US media. 74% of Americans say they would prefer to consume news with a wide variety of opinions. Support for openly biased media is highest among young people.
Among “left” Americans, 34% see the media as “unfair.” The percentage rises to 39% for independents and 75% for “right” Americans. In addition, the report says that an increasing number of Americas view their media as only representing the interests of one political party, young people, women, or racial minorities.
Weekly consumption of actual printed news in the USA is down to 15%. Consumption of printed news is in a freefall collapse around the world. Austria is a total outlier, with 45% of people saying they read printed news in the past week.
While “journalists” still dominate news dissemination on Facebook and Twitter, so-called “influencers” have eclipsed them on Tik Tok, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Norway is the world leader in getting people to pay to read online news. A staggering 45% of Norwegian news consumers are spending money on one or more websites for news. The percentage goes down to 21% in the USA, 9% in Germany, and 8% in the UK. The report says that the number of Americans paying for online news rose sharply after Trump assumed office.
The average age of those paying for online news is typically in the late 40s or early 50s, depending on the country.
Since the end of Trump’s presidency, there has been a sharp decline in the “right-aligned” news consumption.
