The Sun tops the list of the least trusted newspapers in Britain. And the Mail Online follows suit in the Published Audience Measurement Company latest survey.
When people say that “nobody trusts The S*n” they don’t just mean north of the M25 – it seems that nobody in Britain really does.
According to new figures by the Published Audience Measurement Company (PAMCO, formerly the National Readership Survey), The Sun may well be the most read paper in Britain, but it’s the least trusted newspaper in the country.
A survey by PAMCO with Ipso Mori including 35,000 face-to-face interviews showed that only 48% trusted what they read in The Sun publications, but only 39% trusted its news website.
At the bottom of the trust list with the 70p tabloid were fellow right-wing publications the Mail Online (46%) and the Daily Record (52%), with the Daily Star not much ahead (56%).
The so-called liberal media faired the highest, with the Guardian being the most trusted national daily at 84%, the i following right behind with 83% of readers trusting what they saw on it. The Independent and The Times were not far behind (82% and 81% respectively). But the Conservatives-friendly Telegraph ranked behind regional papers such as the Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, with only 73% of readers trusting its content.
Yet The Observer ranked the most trusted newspaper of all, with a staggering 89% of readers putting their faith in the Sunday paper.
Last year, a study by Prof Brian Cathcart from Kingston University London found that in Britain few people trust in newspaper journalism compared to other countries. And the Edelman Trust Barometer points to an all-time low in 2017 at 32%, while this year only 23% of young people said they trusted British media.
And according to the submission made by the Media Reform Coalition to the Cairncross Review:
“Until journalists are willing to recognise that freedom of the press must be balanced by freedom of the public to assess and challenge the nature of that communication: freedom shared not power abused, trust in journalism is unlikely to be rebuilt. Until journalism is able to hold its own institutions of power to account; to expose its own malpractices, and is willing to challenge some of the most obvious abuses of media power, distrust in news journalism is likely to grow.”
The results of the review, which is “examining the sustainability of high-quality journalism” in Britain, are to be announced early next year.
It remains to be seen if the findings and advised changes will have an impact on Britain’s faith in its own print media.
Joana Ramiro is a reporter for Left Foot Forward. You can follow her on Twitter for all sorts of rants here.
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