{"id":863454,"date":"2025-07-19T00:12:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T05:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/19\/at-a-glance-australians-distrust-the-news-but-thats-not-the-whole-story\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T00:12:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T05:12:23","slug":"at-a-glance-australians-distrust-the-news-but-thats-not-the-whole-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/19\/at-a-glance-australians-distrust-the-news-but-thats-not-the-whole-story\/","title":{"rendered":"At a glance, Australians distrust the news, but that\u2019s not the whole story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The long-running global study in news consumption habits and trends \u2014 the 2025 Digital News Report<\/a> (DNR) \u2014 comes at an interesting time for Australian media.<\/p>\n

The survey, delivered by YouGov to a representative panel of 2006 participants, was conducted towards the end of January. This was two months before the presence of influencers and new media at the 2025 budget lock-up sparked bitter and unproductive media discourse<\/a> in both directions, and in the lead-up to what was anticipated to be the official election period.<\/p>\n

Speaking to voters, Crikey<\/em> readers and other journalists throughout the election, there was a distinct feeling that trust in Australian news outlets has never been lower.<\/p>\n

But the 2025 report paints a more complex picture of what Australian news readers trust, and whose work they are looking to on digital platforms.<\/p>\n

Trust in Australian news<\/h2>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\"With\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n

Trust in news has stayed more or less the same over the past 10 years, with 43% (up three points compared to 2024) of respondents saying they trust the news in Australia in general. The same goes for people\u2019s trust in their preferred news sources \u2014 with 49% (down one point) saying they feel they can trust what they consume.<\/p>\n

While trust has remained steady, distrust has also grown over the past 10 years. In 2025, 32% say they distrust the news most of the time, up from 25% in 2016. The solutions that respondents proposed to reduce distrust are all commonly discussed ideas: less bias and opinion; more facts and accuracy; independence.<\/p>\n

To have almost one-third of news consumers actively distrust the media is not good news for an industry struggling with many existential challenges, which are also tackled in this report. While TV remains the main source of news for most respondents (37%), in 2025 social media has taken second place for the first time, overtaking online news. It is now the main source of news for 26% of people.<\/p>\n

But the perception that this distrust and platform shift is \u201ckilling\u201d Australian news and making them irrelevant in comparison to \u201cnews influencers\u201d isn\u2019t the whole story.<\/p>\n

Although more people get their news from social media than ever, the report shows they still want that news to come from the media establishment.<\/p>\n

Traditional news media\/journalists are the top news source for every single social platform: Facebook, X, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.<\/p>\n

Even when broken down by age, people under 35 consume more news from traditional news and journalists on Facebook and Instagram. On TikTok, they get news equally from traditional news as from \u201cnews creators\u201d. YouTube is the only platform where news creators outrank traditional media (32% to 28%).<\/p>\n

It shows a change in where people find news, rather than a shift in the content they want. <\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve written before, TV shows often branded as \u201coutdated\u201d, such as Q+A<\/em> and Sunrise<\/em>, perform incredibly well on social video platforms<\/a>. After The Project\u2019s<\/em> axing last week, head writer and supervising\u00a0producer Hunter Smith told The Briefing<\/em> podcast<\/a> that clips from the show do so well on social media that its online presence was the most successful of any Australian news show. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\"Rejoice!\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n

\u201cThe sort of numbers The Project<\/em> can rack up on any given day, on YouTube and Instagram primarily, is staggering. You could argue the exact same people are watching The Project<\/em>, they\u2019re just watching in a completely different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to AI \u2014 the other big, existential threat to news journalism \u2014 it\u2019s a similarly nuanced picture. The headline is that Australians are becoming more comfortable with AI-produced news, but the \u201chow\u201d matters. Only 21% of people are comfortable with news that is mostly AI-generated, whereas 43% say they are comfortable with news \u201cproduced mostly by a human journalist with some help from AI\u201d.<\/p>\n

The DNR findings put into context some of the changes being made at Australian news outlets, big and small. It\u2019s clear people still want and need news from journalists working at established media organisations, no matter how much we all gripe about distrust and egregious failures in honest reporting. As ever, the challenge lies in how news outlets adapt their journalism to these newer platforms, which come with new conventions, in a financially viable and sustainable way. A tale as old as time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The long-running global study in news consumption habits and trends \u2014 the 2025 Digital News Report (DNR) \u2014 comes at an interesting time for Australian media. The survey, delivered by YouGov to a representative panel of 2006 participants, was conducted towards the end of January. This was two months before the presence of influencers and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":863455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30972,26491],"tags":[43384,75467],"class_list":{"0":"post-863454","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australians","8":"category-glance","9":"tag-australians","10":"tag-glance"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}