Auckland, New Zealand Public trust in news rose for the first time since records began in 2020.
According to New Zealand’s latest Trust in News report, 37% of respondents now generally trust news, up from 32% last year. Judging from recent trends, this is quite a jump.
The report also shows that 50% of people now trust the news they read personally, up from 45% in 2025.
This is the first positive result on public trust in news since we started researching the topic at AUT’s Center for Journalism, Media and Democracy in 2020.
As we do every year, we asked New Zealanders if they thought they could “trust most news most of the time”. We also asked them about their trust in the news they consume personally, their opinions of specific news brands, the extent to which they avoid news and the extent to which they pay for it.
Many of our questions match those asked in a global study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, allowing us to make international comparisons.
The survey of more than 1000 New Zealanders was weighted by age, gender, highest education level, personal income, ethnicity and region. This means that the respondents accurately represent the adult population within these demographics.
How to explain this change?
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We believe an important factor in rising trust is increased public awareness of disinformation, deepfakes and AI vulnerabilities.
This prevalence of low-quality information disseminated on social media for commercial or political gain, coupled with an increasingly heated public debate, seems to have led to greater awareness of the need for verified facts.
As one white male respondent aged 35-44 put it: “Traditional news networks and journalists will eventually regain trust because [there] There’s no way to tell if something is AI bullshit. “
In fact, this year we asked respondents where they go for news they don’t trust. More than half said they went to places like their trusted news sources. Only 8% use chatbots to check for suspicious messages.
Overall, our trust in news has improved, returning close to the international average among the 48 countries surveyed by Reuters, but remains well below 2020.
Has time changed?
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As the coronavirus pandemic and its associated social discord fade into history, might we also see a shift toward a more reasonable national conversation?
The picture is not clear.
There were a lot of anti-media comments from respondents this year. For example, one respondent, a Caucasian male aged 35 to 44 who voted for New Zealand First in 2023, said: “The mainstream media is biased, woke, extremely left-leaning and overall completely untrustworthy.”
This distrust is not limited to the political right. One Greens voter from the same group said: “Most providers are owned by wealthy people and often have a right-wing slant in their reporting.”
But among the nearly 350 comments from the distrustful, there was also significantly less attention to the Public Interest Journalism Fund, a coronavirus-era media support program that some view as government bribery in exchange for favorable coverage.
There is also less conspiratorial sentiment regarding climate change hoaxes involving the news media as a whole.
Anecdotally at least, it appears the public may be moving away from clearly polarized positions.
Editorial independence matters
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New Zealanders have also unequivocally rejected commercial and political interference in newsrooms.
When asked this year how they would react if media company managers or board members interfered with editorial decisions, 43% of respondents said their trust in media journalism would decrease.
Another 27% said they would consider canceling their subscription to the news outlet.
Overall, 70% rejected such interference in the news.
Support for professional journalism
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When asked which sources of information they pay most attention to, 61% of respondents said traditional news media were among them.
It seems that a large number of people still value the professionalism, responsibility, verification process and checks and balances on their own work in public interest journalism.
For the first time, we asked those who said they trusted the news why they trusted the news.
These responses reveal the differences between those who have lost trust in the news and those who have retained it. They said stories reported by multiple media outlets, fact-checked and from reliable sources, were trustworthy.
White women 45-54 voted green: “I believe in it because I know how it’s produced and I understand its limitations.”
Māori, 45-54, voting for Te Pāti Māori: “I believe in the integrity of professional journalism here.”
In fact, there appears to be some resistance to online conspiracy theories being fabricated by the news media.
White male, 25-34, voted Labour: “I believe the news because, one, it’s true and two, it’s absolutely true.”
a sense of perspective
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It’s important to be realistic about any positive trends in this latest survey. Since we started publishing this report, trust in the news has been falling dangerously.
While welcome, the recent upturn does not change the overall downward trend over time, which is quite steep.
But in recent years, news media have responded to growing trust issues and promoted transparency and verification processes. The government has also cited public trust as a key issue for the state-owned broadcaster.
The public is likely to react when faced with an overabundance of misinformation, especially on social media.
It’s too early to say anything definite. But this report suggests things are changing — possibly for the better. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium
Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
