Emotional Brits shunning the news because they’re ‘bored, angry or sad’ at Brexit About 35 per cent of British people now actively shun the news, many driven by emotions over Brexit

“British news consumers are turning away from little-known news providers”

A fascinating snapshot has emerged of the state of the UK media in 2019, showing it ravaged by the public’s frustrations over Brexit and facing a perilous future.

A gulf is emerging in our democracy between those who take trouble to be informed by the news and those who take active measures to escape from it. ‘News avoidance’ has become a thing and it is up by 6 per cent around the world this year, and by a whopping 11 per cent in the UK.

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Some 35 per cent of British people now actively shun the news, according to the annual Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for Journalism. Many are “driven by boredom, anger, or sadness over Brexit”, say the authors.

Others simply say the headlines depress them. “Although I do watch the political news avidly, I made a new resolution to stop as it has a negative effect on my mood as I feel powerless to change anything,” one 55-year-old woman told the Institute, based at Oxford University.

A positive trend

“The polarisation of British society is reflected in media demographics”

There is a positive trend here too. The UK media has been particularly effective in shining light on fake news; exposing the global Cambridge Analytica scandal, and revealing the influence of Macedonia-based propaganda sites and Russian troll farms. British audiences are acutely aware of this subject, and “concerns over misinformation” rose more in the UK last year (up 12 per cent to 70 per cent of the public) than anywhere else in the world.

As a consequence, British news consumers are turning away from little-known news providers and sticking to trusted brands. Some 29 per cent of people said they had “started using more reputable sources” for online news, and 26 per cent had chosen not to share an “unreliable” story found on social media. “I’m much more limited in the news I access now,” says Chloe, in her early Thirties. “I think the ones you trust are the traditional ones that have been around for a long time.”

But while American media has benefited financially from the controversy around the Trump presidency, British outlets have not been helped by political upheaval. “There has been no Brexit bounce for the media”, says the report. The proportion of UK people paying for online news has barely moved (up from 8 per cent to 9 per cent) since 2013. Most news sites will remain free.

The polarisation of British society is reflected in media demographics. ITV News has a higher proportion of “populists” among its audience than the BBC, which appeals more to “non-populists”, the study finds. In written media, the least populist titles are The Economist and Financial Times, with populists drawn to The Sun and Daily Mirror. “People with populist attitudes are more likely to identify television as their main source of news, more likely to rely on Facebook for online news, and less likely to trust the media overall,” say the authors.

A beacon of hope

Audiences were also defined by their left-right political leanings. The report found that The Independent, once a home for maverick centrists, has a readership that sits politically between that of The Guardian and the far-left Canary website. Readers of the Telegraph, where Boris Johnson is a columnist, are more right-wing than those of The Sun. The BBC’s audience (as opposed to its editorial output) is very marginally to the left, and ITV’s is slightly to the right.

We are not as polarised as America, where 53 per cent of those on the political left trust the news media (driving a rise in subscriptions to liberal newspapers), compared to a pitiful 9 per cent of those on the right (driving a rise in right-wing alternative media). But the ‘Tory press’ should be alarmed that media trust among those on the UK right has crashed from 58 per cent to 41 per cent since 2015. On the left there has been a more gradual decline to 38 per cent.

In France the picture’s worse, with perceived failings in coverage of the ‘Yellow Vest’ movement linked to a collapse in public confidence in news last year (just 24 per cent expressed trust).

The beacon of hope is Norway where 34 per cent pay for a news subscription (incidentally, Norwegians also make most use of electric cars and recycle 97 per cent of plastic bottles).

But for UK media to replicate this success they must compete with Netflix, Spotify, and gaming and dating apps. Because the Reuters Institute suggests that few people will pay for more than one media subscription, and only 7 per cent of under-45s would prioritise “news” over “entertainment”.

Significantly, the New York Times is winning new subscribers by promoting cookery and crossword content. UK media might need a similarly broad strategy to beat the Brexit blues.