Changing news habits, shifting trust

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has unveiled plans to tackle mis- and dis-information online by requiring social media platforms including Meta, YouTube, and TikTok to prioritise content from ‘trusted’ news sources – gaming algorithms and making it easier for users to see credible content.

With the rise of AI-produced content and bad actors, most will agree that something must be done to tackle fake news. In fact, according to the latest Reuters Digital News Report released this month, 77% of respondents in the UK are concerned about misinformation online. 

But the government announcement raises an interesting question: who gets to define trust?

The plans categorise public service broadcasters like ITV, BBC and Channel 4 as trusted sources alongside other regulated national and local news outlets. But trust can be a personal choice influenced by a myriad of factors including age, political leaning and education – the sources I trust may not be the sources others do. 

Significantly, some of us don’t trust any news we see: in the same Reuters report, 37% of respondents said they didn’t think they could trust most news most of the time, while 25% even said they didn’t think they could trust the news they choose to consume.

My colleague, Izzy Wauchope, Associate Director in SEC Newgate UK’s Insight and Intelligence Team, says: “Trust is an interesting metric at the moment. People don’t tend to sit down and decide what they trust about news sources. In many cases, it is built through familiarity, habit or alignment of opinion. There will also be cases of people engaging with content that they don’t trust for its accuracy, but they enjoy. In a fragmented media landscape, the cause of trust, and the role of trust itself is becoming more difficult to define and certainly more difficult to measure.”

Whether or not the government’s proposed plans see the light of day, for comms professionals these findings highlight a growing problem. In the past, coverage in established news outlets has helped organisations build trust with stakeholders. Now, we must work hard to earn trust in the first place and work even harder to retain it. 

For corporate affairs advisers, that means developing proactive communications strategies that work across all online platforms, incorporating trusted spokespeople, as well as credible thought leadership, that stands up to scrutiny. This is even more important in today’s AI-driven world, where information is surfaced from multiple sources and served up as fact. Coverage in credible earned media is an even more valuable signal of trust to AI tools that stakeholders use, but it must be balanced with other sources that stakeholders themselves deem trustworthy.

The current debate around trust may be focused on news sources, but its implications are wide-reaching. In a world where information is abundant and the creator economy is blurring the lines between journalism and entertainment, trust is becoming harder to earn. Building credibility with consistency across the most relevant communications touchpoints is key.