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Traditional news media are struggling to connect with much of the public, with declining engagement, low trust and stagnating digital subscriptions, according to the 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News Report.
The survey also highlights emerging challenges in the form of AI platforms and chatbots, including AI search summaries which publishers worry could further reduce traffic flows to websites and apps.
“This year’s report comes at a time of deep political and economic uncertainty, changing geo-political alliances, not to mention climate breakdown and continuing destructive conflicts around the world,” said Nic Newman, senior research associate, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
“Against that background, evidence-based and analytical journalism should be thriving, with newspapers flying off shelves, broadcast media and web traffic booming. But as our report shows the reality is very different.”
An accelerating shift towards consumption via social media and video platforms is further diminishing the influence of “institutional journalism” and supercharging a fragmented alternative media environment containing an array of podcasters, YouTubers, and TikTokers.
Populist politicians around the world are increasingly able to bypass traditional journalism in favour of friendly partisan media, personalities and ‘influencers’ who often get special access but rarely ask difficult questions.
“These trends are increasingly pronounced in the United States under Donald Trump, as well as parts of Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, but are moving more slowly elsewhere, especially where news brands maintain a strong connection with audiences,” said Newman.
“In countries where press freedom is under threat, alternative ecosystems also offer opportunities, at their best, to bring fresh perspectives and challenge repressive governments.
“But at the same time these changes may be contributing to rising political polarisation and a coarsening debate online. In this context, our report uncovers a deep divide between the US and Europe, as well as between conservatives and progressives everywhere, over where the limits of free speech should lie – with battle lines drawn over the role of content moderation and fact-checking in social media spaces.”
However, the report also shows that in a world increasingly populated by synthetic content and misinformation, all generations still prize trusted brands with a track record for accuracy, even if they don’t use them as often as they once did.
In Australia, the news media are not as polarised as those in the UK and US, the report says. "Audience levels of trust remain steady. The main public broadcasters ABC and SBS continue to attract the most trust, though popular commercial television and national newspapers are only slightly behind."
The fourteenth edition of Digital News Report is based on data from six continents and 48 markets, including a survey of 2,006 in Australia.
Key findings:
- Engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows.
- Personalities and influencers are, in some countries, playing a significant role in shaping public debates. One-fifth (22%) of our United States sample says they came across news or commentary from popular podcaster Joe Rogan in the week after the inauguration, including a disproportionate number of young men.
- News use across online platforms continues to fragment, with six online networks now reaching more than 10% weekly with news content, compared with just two a decade ago. In In the survey a third (36%)use Facebook and (30%) YouTube for news each week. Instagram (19%) and WhatsApp (19%) TikTok (16%) and X (12%).
- Data show that usage of X for news is stable or increasing across many markets, with the biggest uplift in the United States (+8pp), Australia (+6pp), and Poland (+6pp). Since Elon Rival networks like Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon are making little impact globally, with reach of 2% or less for news.
- Video continues to grow in importance as a source of news. Across all markets the proportion consuming social video has grown to 65% in 2025 from 52% in 2020 and any video from 67% to 75%.
- The US has among the highest proportion (15%) accessing one or more podcasts in the last week, with many of these now filmed and distributed via video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. By contrast, many northern European podcast markets remain dominated by public broadcasters or big legacy media companies and have been slower to adopt video versions.
- TikTok is the fastest growing social and video network, adding a further 4 percentage points across markets for news and reaching 49% of the online survey sample in Thailand (+10pp) and 40% in Malaysia (+9pp). But at the same time people in those markets see the network as one of the biggest threats when it comes to false or misleading information, along with Facebook.
- Overall, more than half (58%) say they remain concerned about their ability to tell what is true from what is false when it comes to news online, a similar proportion to last year. Concern is highest in Africa (73%) and the United States (73%), with lowest levels in Western Europe (46%).
- When it comes to underlying sources of false or misleading information, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest threat worldwide (47%), along with national politicians (47%). Concern about influencers is highest in African countries such as Nigeria (58%) and Kenya (59%), while politicians are considered the biggest threat in the United States (57%), Spain (57%), and much of Eastern Europe.
- The public is divided over whether social media companies should be removing more or less content that may be false or harmful, but not illegal. Respondents in the UK and Germany are most likely to say too little is being removed, while those in the US are split, with those on the right believing far too much is already taken down and those on the left saying the opposite.
- AI chatbots and interfaces are emerging as a source of news as search engines and other platforms integrate real-time news. The numbers are still relatively small overall (7% use for news each week) but much higher with under-25s (15%).
- With many publishers looking to use AI to better personalise news content, there are mixed views from audiences, some of whom worry about missing out on important stories. At the same time there is some enthusiasm for making the news more accessible or relevant, including summarisation (27%), translating stories into different languages (24%), better story recommendations (21%), and using chatbots to ask questions about news (18%).
- However, audiences in most countries remain sceptical about the use of AI in the news and are more comfortable with use cases where humans remain in the loop. Across countries they expect that AI will make the news cheaper to make (+29 net difference) and more-up-to-date (+16) but less transparent (-8), less accurate (-8), and less trustworthy (-18).
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