An increase in public trust in news announced last week has obscured a much less welcome statistic: More New Zealanders are actively avoiding reports of what is happening around them.
The 2026 JMAD Trust in News Report from AUT shows the number of people who sometimes avoid the news has risen to 46 per cent – up five percentage points on last year. The number who occasionally avoid (a higher frequency than ‘sometimes’) is up two percentage points to 19 per cent. Those who often avoid the news has dropped two points to 13 per cent.
Cumulatively, that means that more than three-quarters of us feel the need to switch off at some point. Why? More than half said it was because the news negatively affected their mood and more than a third were” worn out” by the news.
News is now an avalanche that never stops. The old circadian rhythm of morning newspapers, evening television news, and hourly radio bulletins in between has been destroyed by a galaxy of online 24/7 news sources and intrusive smartphone notifications. Updates have turned coherent stories into confusing textbites.
This avalanche may be why a quarter of those surveyed felt there was nothing they could do with the information they received and 17 per cent questioned its relevance to their lives. Forty per cent felt there was too much coverage of conflict or politics and, given the adversarial approach our journalists take to political coverage, it’s probably difficult to distinguish between the two.
There is no surprise in these findings. They reflect the reasons for news avoidance in other countries. Academics from the United States, Spain and the UK carried out a study in 2024 and found many consistent news avoiders did do because the news made them feel drained and anxious. They published their findings in a book titled Avoiding the News: Reluctant audiences for journalism.
However, it is not simply a matter of “the news makes me miserable” –even if sometimes it does. News avoidance is way more complex. Those authors described it as ‘the oyster problem’: Ask people why they don’t like oysters and the deeper you question, the more nuanced the answers become.
News avoidance must be seen within a wider social context, just as trust in news is not determined solely by whether a journalist tells lies. What are lies? Perceptions of truth in our post-post-postmodern world are not always determined by facts but by consistency with audience beliefs. That may be why the reason for news avoidance cited by 14 per cent of respondents in the JMAD report was that “it leads to arguments I’d rather avoid”.
Nevertheless, news media should not see this as an excuse to simply blame society itself…and do nothing. There is no doubt in my mind that the unrelentingly negative nature of news coverage is making people anxious. I see it every day as I log lead stories from the five metropolitan newspapers. It forms the basis of a longitudinal study that has been quietly gathering data since 2020. As I look back over the first months of 2026, I see crime and confrontation, economic gloom, and nature kicking us in the guts. Only rarely do I see positive lead stories and most often they are in Hamilton or Dunedin, not the Big Smokes.
I will keep saying it until the last news outlet closes or I die (whichever comes first): Life is not all doom and gloom, but light and dark of varying intensity that should be reflected in each day’s news selection. Unfortunately, too many of our newsrooms are convinced that we still live in the state of war conceived by 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes: “continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.
The JMAD report, produced by Associate Professor Merja Myllylahti and Dr Greg Treadwell, is an invaluable annual update on New Zealanders’ attitudes to news. Its polling of trust in news has been a constant since the report first appeared in 2020. Trust had been on a downward trajectory since that first report and, I must admit, an upward turn in the latest survey (from 32 per cent in 2025 to 37 per cent this year) came as something of a surprise.
I had not noticed any particular changes in ways our media had covered the news over the past 12 months. So, while any improvement in trust is to be welcomed, I do not think the media themselves can take the credit. It’s far more likely to be an ‘oyster problem’ – much more nuanced that saying the media have been doing a better job.
The trend will be a reaction to multiple factors. It will include everything from journalists trying valiantly to make sense of Donald Trump (although the survey was completed before the current fuel crisis triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran), to reliance on news media during a string of weather events. Trust remains well short of the 53 per cent at the beginning of the Covid pandemic but the effects of damaged social cohesion that followed Covid may be fading.
One factor that could be contributing to the improvement is public concern about artificial intelligence and its ability to create almost a parallel universe. Social media is awash with words and imagery, created by AI, that masquerades as reality. Perhaps news media are seen increasingly as a trustworthy reality check on AI creations.
Since last year, the JMAD survey has been charting users’ attitudes toward the use of news produced mainly by AI. The segment that is uncomfortable remains at 60 per cent, which is above the US and European averages. The number who are comfortable with the predominant use of AI has risen from 8 per cent last year to 11 per cent. The number comfortable with news produced by humans with AI assistance has risen one point to 27 per cent. More than a third, however, remain uncomfortable with even that limited use.
Any news media aiming to significantly increase the use of AI will risk eroding trust and increasing news avoidance. There is a fine balance to be struck between taking advantage of technology that undoubtedly can assist journalists in their work, and following the AI theme tune that it can make humans redundant.
Clearly, there is rising concern among journalists internationally. A survey on the Australian media landscape released last month by PR and media monitoring group Medianet found 93 per cent of respondents were concerned about the impacts that generative AI and Large Language Models could have on the overall integrity or quality of journalism. A year earlier the number stood at 88 per cent and at 79 per cent in 2023.
However, some hirers and firers across the Ditch don’t see it that way. Twenty-two percent of journalists said they had lost work or knew someone who had lost work due to the adoption of generative AI/LLMs in 2025. In 2024, that figure stood at 16 per cent.
News media here and elsewhere have an opportunity to regain the trust that the public formerly vested in them, and to reverse the news avoidance that is reaching dangerous levels. They can do so by providing the integrity and transparency that convinces audiences that what they are seeing and hearing is not only reality, but that the selection and relative importance placed on it are determined by experience and the ethical standards that only humans can apply to each unique situation.
The Australian report included pull-out quotes from respondents. One of them noted that “AI authoring is a terrifyingly attractive option for speeding up content production – at the cost of accuracy and integrity”. There was another, which should be writ large in every news media organisation: “Journalism is a craft, not an algorithm”.