Mainstream outlets including The Straits Times are the most trusted news brands in Singapore: Report

SINGAPORE – Mainstream outlets were the most trusted news brands in Singapore, where overall trust in news remained stable in 2022, according to the Digital News Report 2023 by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, published on Wednesday.

The Straits Times was ranked the second-most trusted news brand in Singapore among the brands surveyed, in the Oxford University-based institute’s annual report.

It tied with Mediacorp Channel 5 News, with 73 per cent of respondents indicating that they trust news from the outlet. Channel NewsAsia was ranked first, with a score of 75 per cent.

The findings come amid ongoing debates in Singapore about media independence and audience trust. Some of these debates have centred on the Government funding SPH Media Trust (SMT) up to $180 million annually, from 2023 to 2027.

When SMT – the publisher of The Straits Times, Lianhe Zaobao, Berita Harian and Tamil Murasu – was established in 2021, and Singapore Press Holdings’ media business was restructured into a non-profit entity, some had raised questions about how editorial independence would be affected.

While trust in news fell globally in the past year, reversing the gains made in many countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, it went up in Singapore.

On average, only 40 per cent of people polled around the world said they trust most news, most of the time. In Singapore, this proportion was 45 per cent, up from 43 per cent in the 2022 report.

This put Singapore in 12th place in the institute’s ranking on overall trust in news, behind Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and Thailand. In all, 46 markets were covered in the report, accounting for more than half the world’s population.

Yet, while trust remained strong, it did not seem to help traditional media outlets attract significantly more readers, with offline and online reach remaining about the same compared with the year before.

The Straits Times was the most popular news source offline, with 37 per cent of respondents reporting that they read the publication weekly, similar to the year before. This was followed by Channel NewsAsia with 33 per cent, and Channel 8 News with 26 per cent.

Online, Mothership was the most used news source, with 48 per cent of respondents using it weekly, compared with the news sites of mainstream brands such as Channel NewsAsia with 46 per cent, and The Straits Times with 42 per cent.

Online and social media were the most common ways of accessing news here, said the report, while both TV and print have declined significantly over the last few years.

YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok grew as platforms for news, while Facebook declined. WhatsApp remained the most used social app for news.

The same trend was observed around the world, as people continued to move away from accessing news through news website and apps, preferring to do so through social media platforms instead. Younger audiences, who grew up with social media, accounted for much of this trend, the report said.

Yet, while such platforms were touted for their potential for encouraging participation, the report said news consumers have become more passive over the years.

Passive consumers who just read the news – compared with active consumers who post or comment, and reactive consumers who like or share – have gone up by 5 percentage points around the world to 47 per cent, up from 42 per cent in 2018.

In Singapore, passive consumers of the news account for 56 per cent of all readers, while reactive consumers account for 31 per cent and active consumers 13 per cent.

“It is difficult to fully explain these trends, but research suggests segments of the public may now avoid publicly sharing or participating in news because they perceive online debates as toxic,” said the report on the overall trend.