The newspaper industry has been in a long, slow decline thanks to the rise of the internet. Now new research from the UK reveals how television news faces a similar fate.
According to new research from the UK communications regulator Ofcom, online platforms have now overtaken TV for the first time as the most popular source of news among adult consumers, 71% to 70%.
This is a major shift. Not only has television dominated news for more than 60 years (during which time it overtook newspapers as the most popular news item; that was the first blow to newspapers), but as online platforms have replaced broadcasters (and newspapers), the news they deliver comes from a much broader range of sources. This is a boon in that it has more viewpoints and a curse in that it is more difficult to verify its accuracy – and consumers fear that this will only get worse with the rise of artificial intelligence.
Ofcom’s broader findings may not come as a surprise: newspapers have been in trouble for decades; television has faced pressure from streaming and online media in other categories such as entertainment for years; and artificial intelligence has much to answer for in areas such as deepfakes and disinformation. But the research is important because it provides insights into how usage has shifted, and Ofcom said it would use the findings to help decide what to focus on in its regulation in the coming years.
“Television has dominated people’s news habits since the 1960s, and it remains very trustworthy,” said Yeh Chong-Teh, Ofcom’s director of strategy and research, in a statement. “But we are seeing a generational shift towards online news, which is often seen as less reliable – alongside growing concerns about misinformation and fake content. Ofcom wants to secure high-quality news for the next generation, so we are launching a review of public service media that help support democracy and public debate in the UK.”
Ofcom has been conducting annual surveys on news consumption since 2017. This year, it surveyed more than 5,000 adults online and in person.
Face the news
Even as online news as a broader category continues to have a disruptive impact on the media market, getting online if you’re a publisher isn’t exactly a magic bullet. also They’ve seen their audiences eroded by the new kids on the block: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and X/Twitter are all in the top 10 news sources in the survey.
Some of this is a bit ironic. The debate over fake news created and spread on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, X/Twitter, and others has been escalating over the past decade, and regulators and lawmakers have certainly taken notice. At the same time, and perhaps because of the uproar, Facebook has moved to de-emphasize news on its platform, effectively destroying it. Facebook news The effort made earlier this year.
News, however, remains at the heart of how people engage with these platforms. Some 30% of respondents said they get their news from Facebook, putting it on a par with ITV. Google-owned YouTube saw its share rise by 12 percentage points to 19%.
TikTok hasn’t quite cracked the top 10 yet, but it’s growing fast. About 11% of adults say it’s a source of news, up from just 1% in 2020.
Users aged 12 to 15 have embraced news on TikTok in a big way. The ByteDance-owned short-form video platform was named by 30% of younger respondents as their favorite source of news, and 12% described it as their primary source of news.
Some 27% said they used YouTube for news, while Facebook and Instagram each accounted for 21%. Snapchat and WhatsApp came in second at 16%, while X/Twitter accounted for 10%. (Interestingly, the BBC is still a source too: 36% said they still use it for news, but it’s the only one that stands out.)
The UK findings appear to largely mirror trends in the US. Pew Research found earlier this year that About half of TikTok users under 30 get political and news content from the video app.
Don’t trust this process.
We shouldn’t greet this trend without sounding the alarm. The rise of the internet and user-generated content goes hand in hand with a faster, more fluid idea of what constitutes news – and how it can be exploited.
Election cycles remain some of the most obvious examples of this. During the UK general election earlier this year, the UK Communications Commission said 60% of respondents to its survey recalled seeing false or misleading information, with 10% saying they saw this type of content “several times a day.”
Furthermore, 57% of respondents said they were concerned about being tricked by deepfake content, while 27% said they had already encountered some.
To be fair, as you can see from the table below, TV, newspapers and radio still have a lot of work to do to win more consumer trust as well. The biggest effort should be to ensure that news doesn’t become a race to the bottom.