Highlights and insights from the research:
- 70% agree you can trust newspapers to be on top of all the news stories at the time
- 82% agree that newspapers bring you a variety of news, even stories you hadn’t previously heard of
- 83% agree that newspapers cover all aspects of the news, not just one particular type of news
- 80% agree newspapers are great at laying out everything to help you make sense of a story, issue or event
- Under 35-year-olds are more likely to change their opinion or behaviour after reading a news story
Against a backdrop of fake news, disinformation and attacks on free speech, 66% of news consumers said they “appreciate and value journalism more since the global coronavirus pandemic began”.
Encouragingly, the increase is most stark in the under 35-year-olds, with 77% valuing the work of journalists more now in providing reliable information and news.
Younger people are increasingly using trusted news brands to check what they see on social media. Although 42% of under 35-year-olds said they used social media more throughout the height of the pandemic, seven in ten of those said they felt less anxious about a story they had seen on social media once they had then checked it out via a news brand.
And 70% of all respondents agreed that a “world without journalism would harm democratic society” – nearly all those cited the work journalists do in “covering important topics and issues that might otherwise be overlooked” and are “important to society”.
