Trust in News

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:

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

As trust in other civic institutions has fallen, trust in news has typically followed, with partisanship often serving as one of the strongest predictors of distrust.

standards, they must contend with reaching distracted users who may encounter their brands only fleetingly in their digital feeds.

Some distrust may be rooted in coverage that has chronically stigmatized or ignored segments of the public. Several interviewees highlighted what they saw as news organizations’ past failings in accurately reflecting the diversity of viewpoints in the communities they seek to serve. Many news organizations have sought to address distrust using various engagement initiatives and publicly reckoning with their failings. But focusing on some communities can alienate others. There is a considerable risk here of doing things that look good and/or feel good, or imitating what others are doing on the basis of little or no evidence, which could lead to wasted efforts at best and counterproductive results at worst.

Assessments of trust and distrust are deeply intertwined with politics. Ultimately, many attitudes about news may have little to do with newsrooms. As trust in other civic institutions has fallen, trust in news has typically followed, with partisanship often serving as one of the strongest predictors of distrust. As cues about the press are often taken from political leaders, it leaves news organizations in a precarious position as they seek to carve out roles as independent, impartial arbiters of truth. Efforts to improve trust involve trade-offs in divided and polarized societies and can also be at odds with other important priorities, such as holding power to account.

WHAT WE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW

The authors outline four research questions that will shape the work of the Trust in News Project in the years to come. These are the questions:

❚ How are platforms damaging to news organizations’ brand identities? The experience of consuming news online is increasingly mediated by platforms often accused of eroding trust by obscuring differences between information sources. We want to investigate to what extent platforms may be contributing to these problems and/or ways they might be harnessed to improve trust in accurate and reliable news. ❚ Which audience engagement strategies build trust and which may undermine it? Newsroom engagement efforts are often based on intuition, and existing research has typically been too disconnected from practice and too focused on only a handful of countries. ❚ How much is too much transparency and what types matter most? Efforts to present journalists as real, relatable people rather than distant, faceless media figures seem important to improving relationships with audiences, but we know little about the effectiveness of such initiatives or their potential to backfire. ❚ Where do preconceptions about news come from and how can they be changed? Entrenched notions about news are likely based on a combination of factors ranging from personal experiences and identities to popular cultural representations of news. We want to know when, how, and why audiences might be willing to revise their preconceptions.

According to Toff, “The Trust in News Project’s first report underscores the complexity of the challenges involved in reversing declines in trust in news worldwide. There is likely no one-size-fits-all approach, but knowing what works, what doesn’t, and why is vital to avoid decisions that might waste already scarce resources.”

For more information on the project, visit reutersinstitute. politics.ox.ac.uk/trust-news-project or contact Ben Toff at bjtoff@umn.edu