News brands lack trust among disadvantaged | WARC | The Feed

News brands lack trust among disadvantaged

Around the world, traditional news brands typically lack trust among disadvantaged communities which regard coverage of people like them, if it happens at all, as “relentlessly negative”.

That’s according to the Reuters Institute, which undertook qualitative research among communities in Brazil, India, the UK and US, who are disadvantaged for reasons of race, caste, religion, class and place.

Why it matters

Traditional news brands offer a more trusted environment than social media (53% vs 35% in Edelman’s global Trust Barometer), and that produces a halo effect for advertisers: UK research, for example, has shown consumers are 30% less likely to question the competence of a brand advertising with a news brand than a non-news brand.

But with many disadvantaged communities distrusting news brands in the first place, advertisers utilising these channels may be failing to reach them or to engage with them at the level they would want. And this could be particularly problematic for those brands trumpeting an ED&I agenda, who then find themselves called out by activist groups. 

Takeaways 

• Many participants saw news media as biased, sensationalistic, or depressing – with personal and consequential stakes.
• The news media as an institution, especially in the UK, the US and India, was often viewed as an extension of systems aligned to serve those in power – systems many felt excluded from.
• Many groups saw journalists as out of touch, lacking the lived experience or knowledge to understand their realities, or even prejudiced (but many also gave positive examples of journalists they thought of as exceptions).
• Most described trustworthy journalism as being aligned with other audiences, saying they wanted more impartiality, transparency, and accuracy in coverage.
• Many spoke of the importance of niche and, in some cases, local news sources they felt more fairly and fully represented people like them and their interests. 
• Representation matters for trust, but concerns raised often went beyond trust.

Sourced from Reuters Institute, WARC