The Guardian’s coverage of the coronavirus outbreak is considered to be substantially better than that of any other British newspaper, according to a University of Oxford study looking at the UK population’s attitudes to news during the lockdown.
According to the research, twice as many Britons said they felt the Guardian was doing a “good job” covering the pandemic compared with the Times, its nearest rival.
The Guardian’s website was also one of the most-read sources for information on the outbreak, second only to BBC News. This fits with internal traffic statistics which show the Guardian has consistently reached record audiences over the last two months, while also seeing a surge in reader contributions to fund its journalism.
Other outlets fared less well but the Sun and the Mail were the only national newspapers where more people felt they were doing a “bad job” than approved of their reporting on the pandemic.
The survey by YouGov for the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute also found that the BBC’s output continues to dominate online news consumption in the UK, with 36% of the population saying they had turned to the public service broadcaster’s website for coronavirus coverage.
Around 16% said they had visited the Guardian’s website, with Sky News and MailOnline in joint third place on 9%.
TV broadcasters continue to outrank all national newspapers in overall trust ratings and audience levels, aided by their far wider reach.
The figures also show broader concerns about low trust in the media, with the population more approving of how the government and the Conservative party have handled the crisis than how the media has covered it. Around a quarter of the population feel news outlets have exaggerated the severity of the crisis.
All news websites have seen record audiences in recent months as people flock to mainstream sources of information in order to find out the latest updates and advice. However, commercial news outlets face an uncertain future as the collapse in the advertising market – and the fall in print newspaper sales that in effect subsidise many free online news sites – has destroyed their finances.
The government is adopting an increasingly aggressive tone towards critical news outlets, echoing its pre-pandemic attempts to take on the BBC and Channel 4. Although this stance was put on hold as the coronavirus spread, it has responded firmly to recent criticism in national newspapers and has introduced a question from a member of the public at its daily press conferences to break up the dominance of the established media outlets.
There are signs that the initial unprecedented levels of news readership seen during the early days of the pandemic have started to soften, with growing numbers of people telling the Reuters Institute survey they were trying to switch off from the news altogether as the lockdown continues.
Separate research published on Tuesday by the media regulator Ofcom backed this up, concluding that the number of people checking the news obsessively had fallen substantially, while 30% of people were actively seeking to avoid news about the pandemic. This could be a potential issue for the government if it needs to send messages about changing lockdown conditions to the population.
Ofcom also found that around half the population had encountered disinformation suggesting the coronavirus pandemic was linked to the rollout of 5G mobile phone technology, although it did not ask respondents whether they believed the conspiracy theory, which has led to some people burning down telecoms equipment.