While the coronavirus pandemic has been delivering record audiences for news organisations, some polls suggest public trust in British journalism is simultaneously eroding.
In recent weeks a number of consumer surveys have painted a mixed picture of the public’s relationship with news media organisations.
A recent YouGov poll of 1,652 people for Sky News found that two-thirds of the public don’t trust TV journalists, and almost three-quarters don’t trust newspaper journalists. This has been attributed by some Conservative MPs and commentators to the mainstream media’s sometimes aggressive questioning of the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, arguing it is out of step with the mood of a panicked public seeking national unity during the crisis.
“We never come out that well in polls, we’re never going to be up there with Mother Teresa,” says Mark Austin, an evening news presenter at Sky News, who has been vocal about the issue.
“A lot of the criticism I’ve seen online is about [the media] not supporting the government enough, missing the mood of the country, not making a positive contribution. But it isn’t a journalist’s job to support the government. We can positively contribute by representing the views of doctors, nurses and carers with no PPE, or health workers saying ‘I’m not being tested’.”
A survey by YouGov for the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute found that 54% of the 2,823 people polled thought that the UK government was doing a good job of responding to the pandemic, while a quarter felt the media had exaggerated the crisis, indicating criticism could be eroding trust.
Similarly, the Sky News survey found the public are putting their faith in government and officials – “rallying around the flag” – with strong support for officials including Boris Johnson, boosted by his personal experience of contracting the virus, and the chief medical officer for England, Chris Whitty. The issue of trust may also be being impacted by political leanings: Reuters Institute found 82% of those on the right thought the government was doing a good job, but the figure was only 14% for those on the left.
“People think you are either with us or against us,” says Richard Sambrook, a former director of global news at the BBC and the director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University. “People trust media less when they don’t see it supporting their point of view and instincts. You have the camp that’s saying we must rally around Boris in this moment of national crisis. And another camp saying that the government must be held to account on important questions.”
A significant factor at play is in the wording of survey questions. For example, the Sky News survey simply asked the public about trust in journalists per se. A very different picture of public trust emerges when looking at specific media and organisations.
Polls by YouGov, the Reuters Institute, and Survation, which asked 3,029 people, Ipsos MORI and weekly research by Ofcom, the broadcasting and media regulator, of 2,000 people, have all found that broadcasters and newspapers are widely considered to be the most trusted sources of information on the coronavirus crisis.
“There simply has been no collapse in public trust in news media during the coronavirus outbreak,” YouGov concluded after examining trust levels recorded in its polls of 1,643 people from during last year’s general election up until last week.
Broadcasters are the most trusted source of news during the crisis, led by the BBC, with levels running from 72% to 82% across the corporation, ITV, Sky, Channel 4 and Channel 5, according to Ofcom. The BBC is widely considered to have handled coverage of the crisis well, no mean feat after being accused during the general election of bias from all sides of the political spectrum.
“Public service broadcasting is having a good crisis in terrible circumstances,” says Roger Mosey, former editorial director at the BBC and master of Selwyn College, Cambridge. “The factual information from the BBC, ITV and Sky has been good. Anecdotally and from what I see in public surveys people respect what is being said.”
When it comes to newspapers, there is a significant divergence in perceptions of public trust.
The Guardian, Financial Times, the Telegraph and the Times have trust levels in some cases close to TV news broadcasters. Survation and the Reuters Institute have the Guardian as the most trusted newspaper doing the best job of covering the pandemic. YouGov found in an examination of six months of data that public trust in what it calls these “upmarket” newspaper titles has remained completely stable.
Mid-market and tabloid titles, such as the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and the Sun have historically had much lower levels of public trust. There has been no erosion of these lower levels of trust during the coronavirus pandemic, YouGov found.
While news outlets continue to see record audiences there are signs that the public is beginning to tire of wave after wave of coronavirus news. The Reuters Institute found that 47% of respondents say they now sometimes try to avoid the news. Separate research published by Ofcom on Tuesday found that more than a third of people are now actively seeking to avoid news about the pandemic, up from about a fifth in the first week of lockdown.
“There is an element of shoot the messenger to this,” says Austin. “Criticism comes from all sides, it’s an interesting place to be. The other day Richard Littlejohn [Daily Mail columnist] wrote ‘When will TV news stop scaring us to death over the coronavirus crisis?’ My answer to that is when it stops being true.”