ACROSS THE world, the relationship between the press and the governments it holds to account has grown increasingly vexed. Conservative lawmakers in Britain want to bring the BBC to heel, arguing that it is not impartial and does not represent the country as a whole. On June 24th Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, was forced to shut under a new national-security law which clamps down on “treason, secession [and] sedition”. In May a Belarusian fighter jet forced down a passenger flight so that Roman Protasevich, a Belarusian opposition blogger, could be detained. He remains under house arrest.
Public trust in the press has been on the wane, too. Since 2012 the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, a research centre and think-tank at Oxford University, has collected data on attitudes towards the media and news-consumption habits. Between 2015 and 2020 the number of people who claimed to “trust most news most of the time” decreased in several countries (see chart).
During the covid-19 pandemic, this downward trend has halted. In almost all the countries examined by the institute’s latest report, published on June 23rd, trust has improved since early 2020. The exact reason is unclear, though the authors speculate that the coronavirus has “shown the value of accurate and reliable information at a time when lives are at stake”; the crisis “may have made the news seem more straightforward and fact-based at the same time as squeezing out more partisan political news”.
America, however, is an exception. Confidence in the media there remains low. Only 29% of Americans claim to “trust most news most of the time”. That is the lowest figure of the 46 countries included in the survey. Political divisions are reflected in opinions of the media: 51% of people who consider themselves left-leaning think that the media “cover people with their political views fairly”, compared with only 16% of those on the right. Many conservatives have stopped following the news altogether since President Joe Biden arrived in the White House: in 2020 74% said they were interested in current affairs, but in 2021 only 57% did.
Such ideological patterns are noticeable in other countries, too. In Germany media trust drops off sharply for people on the right (see chart); protesters at anti-immigration rallies in recent years have also expressed their displeasure with “the lying press”. In other places, such as Denmark, Italy and Spain, trust in the media is lower at both political extremes. In Britain it is people on the left who are most sceptical of the media. They trust public-service broadcasters such as the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 but dislike newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Sun.
In newsrooms across the world, but particularly in America, this lack of trust has precipitated a wider discussion about the nature and purpose of journalism. Writers at some publications have questioned whether objectivity is possible, or even desirable. The report suggests that abandoning that ideal entirely would be unpopular. Though a significant minority of respondents (24%) feel there are subjects “where it makes no sense to try to be neutral”, 74% think that “outlets should reflect a range of views rather than take a position about a news story”. Many (66%) would prefer that the media offer neutral reporting all the time.
"Media" - Google News
June 28, 2021 at 07:00AM
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Trust in the media has increased in the past year - The Economist
"Media" - Google News
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