How much do people trust the news?

And why that's such a daft question.

The report of a sixth annual survey on trust in news in Aotearoa New Zealand by the AUT Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) has stimulated another bout of media self-examination.

Adding to the week’s mix, Deputy PM Winston Peters grabbed media attention by attacking the media and parading his distrust of journalists – a publicity stunt that never seems to fail him.

A key point in the JMAD report was: “from 2020 to 2025, general trust in news in New Zealand fell from 53% to 32%”. This fits an international trend, going by the Edelman Trust Barometer. The JMAD survey also finds that principal reasons why many Kiwis say they’re avoiding news are: feeling overwhelmed, lack of trust, perceptions of political bias, and perceptions that opinion often masquerades as news. (They say “perceptions”, as if we were just imagining it!)

As I’ve written a couple of trust-themed books and currently teach a university course on media and conflict, one might anticipate that I’d be completely behind this survey, and hence concerned about “rebuilding” trust in media. But that’s not how I see it.

The JMAD survey and others like it ask the wrong questions. With no disrespect to the surveyors, let me explain why.

“News” is not something that people trust. In real life, people trust or distrust other people. We sometimes generalise that sense of trust to whole organisations or institutions full of people. You may or may not trust a journalist. You may believe or disbelieve what you read, see or hear in the media.

Our trust has been misconstrued in the trust-in-media story.

People look for a number of things in the news, principally an account of current events: “What’s going on in the world?” For that, consumers want objectivity, by which I mean “verified facts” about questions such as: What happened? Who did it? Who was affected by it?

Reports in the news are not normally blow-by-blow records, however. They’re stories, or narratives, put together purposefully. A news story starts with a headline to gain and orient attention. Some basic facts and some quotes from relevant people give it substance. If it’s not been done in too much of a rush, it’ll have a logical flow that aids understanding (as I hope this column does).

The viewer/listener/reader may not stop to reflect, however, on how many decisions (some careful, some not) have gone into the story, from the reporter on the beat, through to the writing and editing, and choosing what leads and what gets relegated further down.

The highlighting of some facts and the omission of others produce (consciously or unconsciously) a certain slant or bias on the subject-matter. The inclusion of background facts and differing opinions helps to overcome that.

Time-pressures and limited space don’t make that easy though.

State-controlled media in authoritarian societies that censor opposition voices and only broadcast officially approved versions of events are all too common. In liberal democracies with a free press, there may be similar, albeit more subtle, forms of institutional control and hence bias.

But news consumers in democracies generally expect balance, especially from those media outlets than purport to be nationally or internationally relevant. If there’s a free and open contest for political offices, then there has to be a free and open contest of ideas and opinions. All significant sides in a controversy deserve to be aired.

Nowadays there are so many choices of channels that, if you really prefer a left- or right-wing bias, then there’s someone who provides that for you. If they’re open about their political leanings, then you can take that into account. But the “big tent” media organisations, whether they’re privately owned or publicly funded, should provide balance: report the facts and let competing opinions be heard.

That sounds simple enough in principle, but it’s harder to do well than you might think. And people are telling surveyors that they see too much political bias in the media. Opinions masquerade as news, reporters make biased assumptions, and interviewers give some politicians an easier time than others.

So, when a surveyor asks a person if they “trust the media”, the answer is more likely to be “no" or “not much”. But treating this as a sorry state of affairs underestimates people.

When people see political biases in the news, it’s not because they’re distrustful. Instead it’s because they’re intelligent, perceptive and discerning. They’re reading the media critically. And that’s a good thing.

As everyone now has instant access to politically diverse points of view, in and outside of mainstream media, people become more aware of the contested, constructed, and often arbitrary character of what passes as The News. And that develops a healthy scepticism. People take in diverse views from diverse sources and learn to weigh them up and assess them critically.

Admittedly, some people do opt for sheer nonsense or conspiracy theories – but fewer than you’d think if you uncritically read those numerous alarmist columns about algorithms and misinformation. And, by the way, some people lie to surveyors just for the sake if it, making it hard to estimate actual levels of belief in conspiracy theories.

The decline in surveyed trust in media may, to a large extent, be a product of readers now being more open-minded and hence harder to dupe, or unwilling to swallow whole whatever they’re fed. Distrust can be a rational attitude when we’re faced with conflicting claims and ideologies.

The angst about how most people “distrust the media” is misplaced. In a society that’s almost entirely literate, with access to a far greater quantity and variety of (often very reliable) information than ever, it would make more sense to ask how effectively people interpret The News as critical thinkers.

A degree of scepticism is healthy in a diverse and contested media environment. It’s fruitless to ask anyone to trust media – or governments – uncritically or unconditionally. Sledge Hammer’s “Trust me, I know what I’m doing!” was supposed to be a joke!

Trust-in-media surveys feed media self-obsession and their narratives of crisis, and hence they become self-fulfilling. The beneficiaries are populists like Winston Peters.

No social scientist can tell you how much trust in media (or in government) is desirable or optimal – because there’s no such “target”. Unlike rebuilding a broken bridge, rebuilding trust isn’t an engineering problem. Things get no clearer when surveyors promote their own work in the media about a decline of trust in the media. If you get called to do their survey this year, however, you’re now well prepared to respond!

Like the News, social surveys are constructed by people, and they need to be interpreted critically – not taken literally.

It would be more useful to learn about how readers/viewers/listeners critically appraise and choose between multiple news sources and their contents. That would mean treating people as intelligent beings, rather than trusting consumers.