Caroline Fisher, Terry Flew, Sora Park, Jee Young Lee & Uwe Dulleck
Journalism Practice
Journalists and researchers have put a lot of energy into how to resolve the crisis of trust in much of the Western news media find themselves, with some studies indicating that media distrust is rooted largely in partisanship, and others finding that audiences identify their own concerns as being based on inaccuracy and bias. This study, a survey of Australian news consumers, echoes some of latter findings, while adding a few new details.
Fisher and her colleagues asked their respondents about things news organizations could do to improve trust, and found that the most popular solutions involve increasing transparency, especially around conflicts of interest. Reducing bias and opinion in news stories was also popular, but more so among older audiences than younger ones. And in a possible indicator of the intransigence of this problem, those those whose trust in media was low were less open to possible solutions than those who already trusted the media.