RESEARCH
NEW RESEARCH: TRUST IN NEWS Assistant Professor Ben Toff leads the project at Reuters. LAST SUMMER, HUBBARD SCHOOL Assistant Professor Benjamin Toff joined The Trust in News Project at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism as Senior Research Fellow, working with the two principal investigators, Reuters Director Professor Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Research Team Leader Dr Richard Fletcher, and a team of post-doctoral research fellows. The Trust in News Project is a three-year program looking across Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States to understand what digital news sources people trust, why people invest their trust in them, and what publishers and platforms can do to help people make decisions about what news to trust online. It is run by the Reuters Institute and based on a grant from the Facebook Journalism Project. Over the next three years, this independent research project will involve research, industry engagement, and journalist fellowships to help researchers better understand the drivers of trust in different contexts and for different audiences, and identify actionable, evidence-based recommendations for publishers, platforms, and others working on issues around trust and news. The project’s first report was released in December 2020 and summarized some of what is known (and unknown) about trust in news, what is contributing to its decline, and how media organizations are seeking to address it. The report, authored by Toff, Sumitra Badrinathan, Camila Mont’Alverne, Amy Ross Arguedas, Fletcher and Kleis Nielsen, took stock of how those who study journalism and those who practice it think about the subject. It combined an extensive review of nearly 200 publications related to trust in news and 82 interviews on the subject with journalists and other practitioners across the U.S., the U.K., India and Brazil. The interviews included journalists from the most prominent brands in each of these countries as well as additional voices of those working to address challenges in the information environment, both inside and outside of newsrooms. Why is trust in news eroding? How does this decline play out across different contexts and different groups? What might be done about it? These are the questions at the heart of the report. Here’s what Toff and his team discovered so far: 18
MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Winter 2021
WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW
There is no single “trust in news” problem. Our research suggests there are rather multiple challenges involving both the supply of news and the public’s demand for information. Grappling with trust in news requires defining what is meant by “trust,” “whose trust,” and “what news” as people hold varying beliefs about how journalism works, sometimes conflicting views about what they expect from it, and differing notions about the true state of the world. Thus, those seeking to regain or retain trust need to be specific in their strategic aims and, ideally, base their work on supporting evidence, as initiatives that work with one part of the public may not work with others. Public understanding of how journalism works is low. Social media isn’t helping. So long as few know what goes into reporting and confirming information, audiences cannot be expected to differentiate between brands using informed assessments about newsgathering practices, which themselves vary considerably in quality. Research on the effectiveness of interventions designed to help people navigate digital media environments shows promise but what works, with whom, and under what circumstances remains murky. As newsrooms seek to communicate commitments to core principles and ethical
