00:00We heard about the disconnect between media organisations and young audiences.
00:11The trained media people versus influencers, and they are getting more hits than us.
00:21Younger people preferring video for news, and not necessarily from your news websites.
00:30This is actually quite discouraging.
00:34Is there any reasons for hope?
00:37What can we do?
00:39In a lot of ways, the scenario is bleak.
00:41There are really difficult numbers.
00:44There are very clear challenges, especially when it comes to younger audiences.
00:49At least in the data that I shared now and that we have been collecting.
00:54I think that there are also reasons to be hopeful or more optimistic.
00:59One of the things that comes to mind has to do with Trusted News.
01:02I worked on the Trusted News project before joining the Digital News Report team.
01:07For three years, we focused on trying to better understand what's going on with Trusted News.
01:11One of the clear findings that we've seen in that data and the Digital News Report data
01:15on trust is that people do trust news from news organisations more than they trust just
01:21random news on social media.
01:22There's a big difference.
01:25I think in the current information environment, people often do struggle to distinguish what
01:31they can believe, what they can't believe.
01:34That advantage that news organisations have, I think that it's worth something.
01:41I think with AI, it's kind of hard to predict how that's going to impact the information
01:45environment, but you could see that even magnifying some of these concerns.
01:49I do think that news organisations have a role to play there.
01:53That we don't have deferential audiences that just say yes, okay, and assume that everything
01:57that news organisations say is true, yes, that's the case.
02:01It's also true that even though when we look at some of the overall figures of Trusted
02:06News and see that some of them are quite low, when we look at individual news brand trust
02:10figures, we see that there are people that might not trust most news, but they do trust
02:14a handful of reputable organisations and they use those to navigate the information environment.
02:20It doesn't mean that those people are trusting nothing.
02:23It just means that they might be more selective in where they're placing their trust.
02:27I think it's definitely a challenge, but there's definitely space for that.
02:32Just one last comment having to do with the news avoidance.
02:36Like I pointed out, we're always looking for things that are actionable.
02:39I think when we ask people why they're avoiding the news, they're quite clear in why they're
02:44avoiding the news.
02:45I think it's incumbent on news organisations, if they're trying to, in fact, reach those
02:51specific audiences, to think about what it is that they're interested in and what they're
02:55open to hearing about and finding ways to balance that with their own internal missions
03:00as news organisations.
03:02I think that those are at least a couple of areas where there's a clear role for news
03:05organisations to play, even as how to do it is challenging.
03:10I think that it's a wake-up call for many media companies that, for a long time, believed
03:17that it's enough to just change the sole business model, meaning getting from print or traditional
03:24TV to digital, and the rest, the content, the distribution, may stay the same.
03:34What makes me particularly hopeful is, for instance, the fact that it becomes a survival
03:41skill for young people to be suspicious, and the reports say that they are twice as much
03:48willing to fact-check the news than older people, because they learned from the very
03:53beginning, like for Gen Alpha, it's like that's the aquarium they're swimming in.
04:02Everything is suspicious.
04:03You need to check everything, not only news, but also content creators, their credibility,
04:08their past, their associations.
04:12Of course, I guess it's not the place to discuss all these dramas that are happening on TikTok,
04:18but I think this is a very, like they're performing really civic obligations to fact-check also
04:26other people that take space.
04:30One more thing about the trust.
04:36I genuinely believe that the trust is conditional, right?
04:44I think this is the idea of the old times, like trust in religion, unconditional trust,
04:49trust in something.
04:50The reality right now is that everything's conditional, and we need to earn the trust
04:55every day.
04:57If we remember about that, like every day is a challenge, but also every day you can
05:02win them, right?
05:04And for me, that's the most inspiring thing that you can get out of the situation, which
05:11is of course challenging, but I see many ways out.
05:16Yeah, I mean, I agree with Danuta a lot in terms of there's a reason why young people
05:21don't trust news, and that's because it's broken.
05:24It's broken because of failures, systemic failures in news companies.
05:30I worked for a little startup called News Corp for five years.
05:36Lovely guy called Rupert Murdoch is one of, I share a nationality with him, and that's
05:42kind of where it ends.
05:45But there's some serious damage that we are now recovering from.
05:48I mean, we feel it particularly in Australia, with young people in Australia.
05:53We have two media companies that own 80% of the landscape, and one of them is News
05:59Corp and the other one's Nine, and they are both misbehaving news companies.
06:05And we have had, even as recently as last week, we had a stabbing in Sydney.
06:11Six people killed.
06:13Our largest broadcaster names the wrong perpetrator on national television.
06:20Like, no wonder we don't trust it.
06:24And so we are now, it's like climate change.
06:28We are now the generation that has to unpick that, and it's going to take time and effort
06:33and pain, and it's going to be a slow, slow burn.
06:38But if we don't do that, we are on a very dangerous trajectory.
06:42And what we actually need is evidence-based, research-based approaches to news, whether
06:49that means that we're linking out to primary sources so our audience can see how we're
06:54doing our jobs, whether that's more media literacy content, whatever it might be, we
06:58need to all be okay with the fact that we stuffed it up, and now we need to unstuff
07:03it.
07:04Sorry to anyone who's feeling bad now.
07:08I have a question about trust.
07:10I was very interested to hear you talking about trust a lot, and I feel like for the
07:15last 200 years, we've relied on the print masthead to convey trust in our industry.
07:21When you're building brands, not from a generation who is literate with print mastheads, what
07:29are your top tips for building trust?
07:32Top tips for building trust, showing up.
07:35And what that means is ensuring that you are consistently the safe place for information.
07:41Every single day, every single night, for years and years and years.
07:46Trust has to be earned, and there is no glamorous way for young, new companies, or even established
07:54legacy companies, to show that they're trustworthy besides form.
07:58And I think, going back to that stabbing in the network that names the wrong perpetrator
08:03– who, by the way, is now suing the network and is going to get a lot of money – they
08:09have just diminished their trust now for, I'd say, the next five years.
08:14And so, it's that mindset that journalists should have in the newsroom of two, three
08:20words could be the difference between trust and no trust.
08:23And that should keep journalists on their toes.
08:26It should make them feel like they have a big weight of responsibility, because it is
08:30an absolute honour to be a reporter and to be conveying information to a group of people,
08:36and that is a really serious responsibility.
08:39I just wanted to add that I think we need to get back to the roots and realise that
08:48media companies, especially big media companies, are seen as the evil corpse, as the parts
08:53of the problem.
08:55For many people, they position themselves in their heads, in their perception, just
08:59next to Meta and Google and all the companies that just wait for their money and for their
09:06moment of disorientation to sell them something, be it a good or a service or an ideology.
09:16So I think the key to this is transparency, and that's something that some companies
09:25dare to do, like share a little bit about how they're financed or how they spend money,
09:30what they spend money on.
09:31Second thing, showing your face, not hiding behind the brand, but showing the real people
09:40working hard for the common good.
09:45There are also great examples of companies that do it, but still, it's just a beginning.
09:53But somehow, I think we're circling back to the very beginning of storytelling and sharing
09:59the news, I would say.
10:01That's how I see it, in cycles.
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