Tag: JM&D

NZ media’s lab test results spell bad news

Three primary indicators of the health of New Zealand news media will be published this week and, if the first is anything to go by, the industry needs to be moved to the Intensive Care Unit.

AUT’s JM&D Trust in News Survey, the Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer, and the annual breakdown of advertising spend by the Advertising Standards Authority are all due this week.

The JM&D report – based on methodology developed by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University for its survey of global trust – was released yesterday (two days early). It shows overall trust in news has dropped dramatically in the past year.

Two-thirds of people do not trust the news. Surely to God that sends a message to all mainstream, media that their approach to journalism has to change.

The overall level of trust has dropped by a staggering 38 per cent in the five years the AUT study has been carried out. Even trust in the news people use has declined by more than 27 per cent since 2020 and now fewer than half of us trust those sources.

We now rank alongside the UK in the low proportion of people who trust most news most of the time. Only the United States posted lower rates.

We also ranked highest in news avoidance in a comparison with the Reuters international survey. In New Zealand, three-quarters actively avoid the news to some extent.  Greece ranks next with about 58 per cent and the international average sits below 40 per cent. Continue reading “NZ media’s lab test results spell bad news” →

News avoidance and lack of trust MUST send a message to media

More than two-thirds of New Zealanders actively avoid news coverage and more than one in ten do so regularly.

Findings released this morning by AUT’s JM&D journalism research centre make sober reading. Its latest Trust in News report shows Kiwis are avoiding the news because they think it is depressing and biased.

In its 2023 survey, which is based on an international study by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University, JM&D asked for the first time about news avoidance and political influence. It used Horizon Research to conduct a nationwide online survey of 1120 adults in February.

Sixty nine per cent said they sometimes or often avoided the news. That is a statistic that sits well above the Reuters Institute’s multi-nation findings. That study found 54 per cent of Brazilians avoided news, followed by 46 per cent in the United Kingdom, 42 per cent in the United States and 41 per cent in Australia. At the bottom of the avoidance table were Japan (12 per cent) and Finland (20 per cent).

At the other end of spectrum, New Zealand’s international ranking of those ‘highly interested’ in news was equally alarming. Little more than a third expressed a strong focus, compared to more than two-thirds of Finland’s population. Continue reading “News avoidance and lack of trust MUST send a message to media” →