Column: Cross Talk

By Sujeet Rajan

NEW YORK – In an era where clever quips from standup comedians, ironic memes and politically motivated jokes revolving on social media is at times more memorable than a report from a newspaper delivered to your door in the morning, it’s no surprise where a majority of urban readers in India are getting their daily nuggets of news from: social media and online news websites.

The Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism included India too in their annual Digital News Report, published this week. Overall, the survey this year comprised of more than 90,000 people in 46 countries. It’s based on YouGov surveys conducted in January and February of this year.

An overwhelming 82% of respondents in India said they get their news online, including from social media. Even those who rely solely upon social media for news consumption, is at 63%, higher than TV at 59%, and print media at 50%.

The survey does acknowledge that despite the growing influence of digital media in India, TV remains the most popular source overall – a likely nod to the rural masses it didn’t reach out to. India has altogether 392 news channels, dominated by regional language channels and private players.

The survey revealed that the three most popular online sources of news for readers in India is NDTV online (35%), The Times of India online (31%) and BBC (at 24%). Republic TV has made giant strides since its inception, and is now at 4^th spot, at 22%, beating legacy brands like the Hindustan Times, India Today, The Hindu, and The Indian Express. Apart from BBC, Yahoo! News and CNN.com are the other foreign entities favored by readers, in the list released.

India is also one of the strongest mobile-focused markets in the global survey, with 73% accessing news through smartphones and just 37% via computer, and 14% through tablet. In comparison, 60% of those surveyed in the US use a smartphone to access news, with computer now well behind at 45%, and tablet, 18%.

India has more than 600 million active internet users, many of whom access the internet only through mobile phones – aided by low data charges and cheap devices, the survey noted.

In India, WhatsApp and YouTube rule on social media platforms, with 53% each for news consumption, followed by Facebook with 43%, Instagram with 27%, Twitter at 19%, and Telegram at 18%.

In the US, Facebook is king, with 28% of respondents relying upon it for news, followed by YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook Messenger. Unlike India where it’s popular, WhatsApp is at the bottom of the heap, at 6% for news, in the US.

The survey ranked India 31 out of 46 countries on overall trust in news. The Times of India is the most trusted media brand in India, according to the survey, at 74%, followed by Doordarshan, All India Radio and BBC, each with 73%.

Interestingly, Republic TV and the Wire – politically leaning news outlets – are almost at par when it comes to trust, with Wire at 55% and Republic at 54%. The element of distrust is also high for both, with 22% saying they don’t trust the Wire, and 29% expressing the same for Republic TV.

The bottom line is that the trust in news in India overall is only 38%, although 45% say they trust the news that they personally use and favor, with the same percentage for those who trust the news that they search for. Only 32% respondents in India trust the news they see on social media, said the survey.

In the US, trust in news overall is even lower, only 29%, with trust in news used by readers at 44%, trust in news they search for at 22%, and trust in news on social media at an abysmal 13%. It’s no wonder that the US ranks last amongst the countries surveyed, for trust in news. Finland held the highest level of trust in the media at 65%.

Today, the news cycle in the US is pretty much akin to an ongoing recession, after a period of high growth. After a hectic news period which included the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, a bizarrely contentious 2020 presidential election, a racial reckoning marked by nationwide protests, and a violent attack on the Capitol by supporters of Trump, it’s now slump time.

There’s a 7% drop in the most avid news users (who access once a day or more), along with a decline of 11% points in respondents who are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ interested in news, in the US, the survey said.

Industry data echoed this trend, with national news brands especially hard hit. Online traffic to the New York Times and Washington Post in February 2021 fell sharply from January’s peak – 17% and 26%, respectively – and was also down year-over-year, according to ComScore data. Meanwhile, by mid-March, CNN and MSNBC lost 45% and 26% of their prime-time audiences respectively, from highs in January. Waning interest in reading Covid-related news in the US, has also perhaps contributed to the turn-off.

However, an anomaly is that slightly more people are paying for online news worldwide, with multiple subscriptions for online news becoming more common in the US.

There is also indication that the younger generations are increasingly turning to social media for niche news, and advice.

A report this week in Fox43 said a new survey from ‘Morning Consult’ shows that Gen Z and Millennial adults are increasingly relying upon social media platforms like Reddit, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, for finance news. All four of the sites garnered about 30% of respondents saying they seek financial advice from creators and ‘influencers’ on the individual platforms, with Facebook as the lead.

Media columnist Margaret Sullivan writing in The Washington Post this week, noted the declining trust in the news media industry, in the US. The peak level of trust was a time in the 1970s, hitting an all-time high of 70 percent. Then, the nation was riveted to the Watergate reporting, the publication of the Pentagon Papers revealing the secret history of the Vietnam War, and CBS’s Walter Cronkite was known as the most trusted man in America.

Sullivan quoted the long-form journalist Janet Malcolm, who passed away last week, to comment on America’s disillusionment with traditional media sources.

Malcolm opened a piece for the New Yorker, in 1989 – which later became a book, ‘The Journalist and the Murderer’ – with these lines: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible,” she wrote. “He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”

(Sujeet Rajan is Editor-in-Chief of www.indiaoverseasreport.com Follow him on Twitter @SujeetRajan1)