Here’s the news about the news: for Australia, things could be worse. Globally, things already are. Looks like we’re back to the pre-COVID trends — with our audience heading down in interest, trust and consumption.
The all-too-brief COVID-driven bump has gone bust, according to the Reuters Institute of Journalism’s annual digital news report based on its survey of about 2000 news consumers in 46 countries, including Australia.
Worse, it looks like the bigger the news — the more overwhelming it seems — the greater the tendency to look the other way. A survey of five countries in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine finds that even news consumers are actively trying to avoid news. The trend is particularly apparent in Poland, which borders Ukraine, and Germany.
As a counter, there’s a more-the-more trend, too: plenty of people can’t get enough news about the war.
The bug has passed
In Australia, the downward trends are similar, but we’re working off a lower base. The local report prepared by the University of Canberra says: “Following a peak in news consumption in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, news consumption returned to the longer-term trend. Since last year the proportion using news more than once a day remained about the same (52%), maintaining the position as one of the lightest news consumers globally.”
There’s a shift underneath that surface stability, with more women reading or watching more news. The report doesn’t speculate why, but perhaps it reflects the increased emphasis on women in politics in Australia over the past year.
There’s good news for the news industry: revenue from readers as subscriptions and other contributions is up, with about 18% of people saying they’ve paid for online news over the past 12 months. There’s some beginning of diversity here, too. Although the old players dominate — 61% to one or more News Corp mastheads, 44% to a Nine masthead — 36% say they subscribe to one of the new digital voices, such as Crikey, The Saturday Paper or The Guardian.
As ever, the public broadcasters remain the most-trusted news brands (66% for the ABC, 65% for SBS), although in a sign that News Corp’s relentless campaign against the ABC is starting to hurt, distrust in the ABC has increased to 17%.
Trust works in a funny way. The more you read (think heavy users, like most Crikey readers) and the more you’re interested in the news, the more you trust what you read, particularly in what you think of as “your” media.
You read it where?
Still, trust is down among the News Corp mastheads, with The Daily Telegraph (41% trusted) and The Herald-Sun (43%) at the bottom of the table of brands ranked in the report.
For Crikey, the report reckons we’ve got the most left-identifying of audiences (although about one in eight Crikey readers are right-identifying). Left-leaning audiences have the highest trust in the media they choose. Sky News, unsurprisingly, holds its lock on the most right-wing audience.
There’s bad news in the report for the journalist-as-brand boosters: three-quarters of those surveyed couldn’t name a single journalist. Highest recall? The ABC’s Laura Tingle, at 10%. Good news for Sky’s passion play: the next four are all part of their after-dark crowd: Peta Credlin, Paul Murray, Andrew Bolt and Rita Panahi.
News Corp’s dominance also shapes how people think about media, with Australian audiences sceptical about how decisions are made in newsrooms. The report says: “Almost half of Australians believe news organisations in Australia put their political views (42%) and commercial interests (47%) ahead of what is best for society.”
There’s a caution in the report, too, for The Sydney Morning Herald in its current brouhaha over celebrity gossip. Asked what subjects interest them, Australians say they are most interested in local affairs (67%), international news (56%) and COVID-19 (51%). Celebrity gossip ranks down the bottom, at 26%.
It’s gendered, says the report. “Women are more interested than men in news about their local community, mental health and wellness, lifestyle, entertainment, crime and personal security, environment and social justice. Men are more interested in international, political, business, sport and science/technology news.”
Might be a few ideas in all that for an urgent masthead pivot over at Nine.
Since when are the Sky After Dark crew regarded as ‘journalists’? That’s an insult to any journalist, right or left, trying to get to the truth.
Yes, and I remember years ago, when people like Bolt and Jones were attracting flak from the media regulator, usually for just making stuff up, their defence was that the rules only really applied to journalists, and they were entertainers not journalists.
The Caterwauling Catamite & Loud John Jaws successfully used that defense at the Cash-for-Comment enquiry.
Blot had it reputationally forcibly removed by the finding that he had breAched section 18 (d) – NB not (c) as he always claims when bellowing across his many outfalls…sorry, RWNJ meeja outlets tha he has been silenced by the Woketatorship.
Put simply, (d) relies upon proof of assertion.
The Blot on the journalistic escutcheon provided none and was thus convicted under s18(d) and, en passant, of S 18(c).
Agreed Frank.The four named (I won’t dignify them by repeating their names, because I hold them in complete contempt) are not journalists, just unimpressive individuals who, despite possessing no journalism background and/or possessing backgrounds featuring failed performance (eg a chief of staff to a former PM sacked by his own party), offered themselves up to News as willing to loudly repeat-vomit-on-demand FRWNJ topics. But I’m not surprised their recognition is high because the garbage “columns” they also write every week or sometimes twice a week are syndicated across the Murdoch monopoly mastheads. So their exposure is not limited to SAD. Bring on the bloody Royal Commission!
Some of their circle also like to work pro bono for foreign governments, visit autocrats and related think tanks in Central Europe with links to the ‘Anglosphere’. The same types were embarrassingly called out by eminent conservative Anne Applebaum early April, followed by ‘reverse ferrets’.
‘Why Australia’s conservatives are finding friends in Hungary’ Koziol SMH 6 Oct ’19.
Totally agree. Alan Jones and John Laws explicitly stated they aren’t journalists during ‘cash for comments’. Whilst I could name them, none of the Sky after dark crew are journalists, they are opinion columnists.
Journalists I personally rate/recall include Laura Tingle, Niki Savva, Michelle Grattan, Paul Bongiorno, Katharine Murphy, Sarah Martin, Peter Hartcher, Alan Kohler, Michael Pascoe, Michael West, Bernard Keane, Giles Parkinson amongst others.
I subscribe to Crikey because it supports independent Australian journalists like Bernard Kean who investigate fearlessly to reveal stories the larger pubs don’t carry.
I like when Kean provides lots of on point factual examples to illustrate his observations. He does this when he is at his best, and not at all when he vents about the premier of Victoria or the CCO. But c’est la vie.
The only thing that bothers me about crikey is why it marks my comments as “pending moderation” all day even when they contain no swear words.
Am I on some troublemaker list, or does everyone get that?
Frank, quite a bit of “pending moderation” gets dished out. I agree that BK needs to ‘get over’ Dan Andrews. This morning I took a short distance journey by car in the SE suburbs of Melbourne. Before the ‘level crossing removals’ program the journey would have taken up to 1.25 hours. This morning it took 25 minutes. Is it any wonder that Premier Andrews has significant support in Melbourne?
I occasionally get thrown into the wait file. A few years back, many people were of the opinion, that it was an automated process driven by key words. For instance, if you used a word for dishonest that started with ‘l’, your post was always swallowed up. I think that word is okay now, but there might be other words, that I’m not aware of, having only recently resubscribed.
Glad you’re back, Bosch
Obviously I’m showing my bias here, but the notion of a “Sky News After Dark Journalist” feels like a bit of an oxymoron.
“…although in a sign that News Corp’s relentless campaign against the ABC is starting to hurt, distrust in the ABC has increased to 17%.”
That’s not why I’ve come to distrust the ABC. I don’t consume any Murdoch products. My growing distrust in the ABC has arisen due to my perception of right-wing bias in quite a number of their political reporters.
The ABC has fallen from being my go-to news service, of which I was very proud, to being somewhere I only look occasionally, having been replaced most satisfactorily by The Guardian plus a number of the less mainstream news services online.
Apart from Laura Tingle. I continue to trust her, and hold her in the highest regard.
Ditto to everything you said.
Yep, metoo
100%, Mia. I feel like a trusted friend has died, quite frankly.
Seems to me that News Corp, having failed to obtain overt control of our broadcaster, has achieved this by stealth – aided by the stream of Liberal flunkies masquerading as our ‘Leaders’ for the last decade. These people have stripped the ABC of funding while parachuting in Sky-boys like Speers and right-wing stealth bombers like Grant, replacing investigation with shallow junk.
Good stuff. Given the major income earner for News and Nine in Australia appear to be their real estate section (please correct me if I’m wrong) I wonder where this fits within the list of preferred subjects in the final paragraphs. Personally, I’d stick it under “religion” or “celebrity”, but I’m surprised it doesn’t get a rating all on its own.