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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/17/facebook-news-publishers-accuracy
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| Are people becoming less reliant on Facebook for their news? | Are people becoming less reliant on Facebook for their news? |
| (about 17 hours later) | |
| When you try to imagine a media diet consisting only of retweets, random blogs or the Facebook posts of family and friends, you grasp the value of journalism created by professional media organisations. Traditional news organisations aren’t perfect, but they are not fake. Nor are they as readily manipulated as we know social media can be. Professional journalism’s longstanding skills of access to sources, verification, presentation and dependable distribution remain an essential element of what nourishes democratic societies. | When you try to imagine a media diet consisting only of retweets, random blogs or the Facebook posts of family and friends, you grasp the value of journalism created by professional media organisations. Traditional news organisations aren’t perfect, but they are not fake. Nor are they as readily manipulated as we know social media can be. Professional journalism’s longstanding skills of access to sources, verification, presentation and dependable distribution remain an essential element of what nourishes democratic societies. |
| That insight, sharply conveyed in images accompanying this column, informs a new campaign to promote the well-regarded Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), a not-for-profit magazine based at the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University, New York. The campaign’s assertion of the importance to a healthy democracy of the public sphere – alongside the private, of course – coincides with two new reports that, in different ways, affirm the same. However, the emerging picture is not clear yet. | That insight, sharply conveyed in images accompanying this column, informs a new campaign to promote the well-regarded Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), a not-for-profit magazine based at the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University, New York. The campaign’s assertion of the importance to a healthy democracy of the public sphere – alongside the private, of course – coincides with two new reports that, in different ways, affirm the same. However, the emerging picture is not clear yet. |
| “Americans and the news media: what they do – and don’t – understand about each other” broadly finds that journalists and the public have similar aims, but that to maintain trust journalists have to better explain what they do. The American Press Institute and the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago surveyed 2,019 adult Americans and 1,127 journalists, and analysed their expectations. Both groups strongly valued accuracy and fairness. Journalists rated their role as watchdogs who scrutinise the powerful far more highly (93%) than did the public (54%). Both groups saw transparency and trust as linked. The CJR has been casting a critical eye over journalism for almost 60 years, and its editor and publisher, Kyle Pope, told me demands on CJR from the public have been growing as US media organisations dispense with their public editors, who are in-house but independent contacts/critics known elsewhere as news ombudsmen or readers’ editors. | |
| “At CJR, our audience has grown by about 50% over the past year for any number of reasons – the confusion surrounding Trump, the rise of disinformation, the continuing business model challenges in the news.” For Pope, the public’s approaches are welcome, and they have generated many stories for CJR, “but we note that there is a void left by the departure of public editors around the country”. | |
| Looking beyond the US, the 2018 digital news report of the UK-based Reuters Institute for the study of journalism tends to support the notion that the public understands that “real journalism matters”, although the authors’ optimism is cautious. Reliance on Facebook for news is falling, they report, and willingness to pay for professionally produced journalism seems to be increasing. But a majority prefer “side-door access” to news through search and social media, rather than going direct to the traditional news publishers. Use of messaging apps is rising “as news consumers look for more private (and less confrontational) spaces to communicate”, the report says. | Looking beyond the US, the 2018 digital news report of the UK-based Reuters Institute for the study of journalism tends to support the notion that the public understands that “real journalism matters”, although the authors’ optimism is cautious. Reliance on Facebook for news is falling, they report, and willingness to pay for professionally produced journalism seems to be increasing. But a majority prefer “side-door access” to news through search and social media, rather than going direct to the traditional news publishers. Use of messaging apps is rising “as news consumers look for more private (and less confrontational) spaces to communicate”, the report says. |
| This rich piece of research, an international collaboration that surveyed online 74,000 news consumers in 37 countries, contains more than this column can convey. I hope to return to it. For now, four morsels quoted directly from the authors’ overview and key findings: | This rich piece of research, an international collaboration that surveyed online 74,000 news consumers in 37 countries, contains more than this column can convey. I hope to return to it. For now, four morsels quoted directly from the authors’ overview and key findings: |
| • Across all countries, the average level of trust in the news in general remains relatively stable at 44%, with just over half (51%) agreeing that they trust the news media they themselves use most of the time. By contrast, 34% of respondents say they trust news they find via search and fewer than a quarter (23%) say they trust the news they find in social media. | • Across all countries, the average level of trust in the news in general remains relatively stable at 44%, with just over half (51%) agreeing that they trust the news media they themselves use most of the time. By contrast, 34% of respondents say they trust news they find via search and fewer than a quarter (23%) say they trust the news they find in social media. |
| • Most respondents believe that publishers (75%) and platforms (71%) have the biggest responsibility to fix problems of fake and unreliable news. This is because much of the news they complain about relates to biased or inaccurate news from the mainstream media rather than news that is completely made up or distributed by foreign powers. | • Most respondents believe that publishers (75%) and platforms (71%) have the biggest responsibility to fix problems of fake and unreliable news. This is because much of the news they complain about relates to biased or inaccurate news from the mainstream media rather than news that is completely made up or distributed by foreign powers. |
| • For the first time we have measured news literacy. Those with higher levels of news literacy tend to prefer newspapers brands over TV, and use social media for news very differently from the wider population. They are also more cautious about interventions by governments to deal with misinformation. | • For the first time we have measured news literacy. Those with higher levels of news literacy tend to prefer newspapers brands over TV, and use social media for news very differently from the wider population. They are also more cautious about interventions by governments to deal with misinformation. |
| • With Facebook looking to incorporate survey-driven brand trust scores into its algorithms, we reveal in this report the most and least trusted brands in 37 countries based on similar methodologies. We find that brands with a broadcasting background and long heritage tend to be trusted most, with popular newspapers and digital-born brands trusted least | • With Facebook looking to incorporate survey-driven brand trust scores into its algorithms, we reveal in this report the most and least trusted brands in 37 countries based on similar methodologies. We find that brands with a broadcasting background and long heritage tend to be trusted most, with popular newspapers and digital-born brands trusted least |
| • This article was amended on 18 June 2018 to correct two figures transposed in editing: CJR is almost 60 years old, and its audience has recently grown about 50%. | |
| • Paul Chadwick is the Guardian’s readers’ editor | • Paul Chadwick is the Guardian’s readers’ editor |
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