The newspaper business has been in the midst of a long, slow decline due to the rise of the Internet. Now, a new British study suggests that TV news is facing a similar fate.
According to a recent survey by the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, online platforms have overtaken TV as the most popular news source among adult consumers for the first time, with 71% of adults consuming news on online platforms, ahead of TV (70%).
This is a major shift. Not only has TV dominated news for over 60 years (during which time it surpassed newspapers in news, which was the first blow to the big papers), but as online platforms have replaced broadcasters (and newspapers), the news they deliver comes from a much wider range of sources. This is a blessing in terms of having more perspectives, but it’s also a curse in that it makes it much harder to check for accuracy. Consumers fear that the rise of AI will make this worse.
Ofcom’s larger conclusions may not be surprising. Newspapers have struggled for decades, TV has been under pressure from streaming and online media in other categories such as entertainment for years, and AI has a lot to account for in areas such as deepfakes and disinformation. But the study is important because it provides statistics on how usage is changing, and Ofcom said it will use its conclusions to decide where to focus its regulation in the coming years.
Yih-Choung Teh, Ofcom’s group director for strategy and research, said in a statement: “Television has dominated people’s news habits since the 1960s and remains highly trusted. But we are also seeing a generational shift towards online news, which is often seen as less trustworthy, and growing fears about misinformation and deepfake content. Ofcom wants to secure high-quality news for the next generation, so we are launching a review of public service media that underpins democracy and public opinion in the UK.”
Ofcom has conducted an annual survey on news consumption since 2017. This year, the survey was conducted online and in person with more than 5,000 adults.
Face the news
While online news as a broader category continues to be a disruptive force in the media marketplace, being online is not a panacea for publishers. Online news outlets also As new platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter eat into the audiences of traditional media, both of them made the top 10 news sources list in the survey.
Some of this is a bit ironic. Over the past decade, there has been a growing debate about fake news being created and distributed on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and X/Twitter, and regulators and lawmakers have certainly taken notice. At the same time, perhaps related to that fervor, Facebook has decided to de-emphasize news on its platform, and earlier this year, it shut down its own Facebook News efforts.
But news is still the powerful beating heart of how people engage with these platforms. About 30% of respondents said they got their news from Facebook, on par with broadcaster ITV. Google-owned YouTube saw its share rise 12 percentage points to 19%.
TikTok hasn’t made it into the top 10 yet, but it’s growing fast: About 11% of adults say TikTok is a news source, compared to just 1% in 2020.
Users aged 12 to 15 have been embracing TikTok as a source of news in a big way. The ByteDance-owned short-form video platform was cited by 30% of young respondents as their go-to source for news, and 12% cited it as their primary news source.
About 27% said they use YouTube for news, while Facebook and Instagram each accounted for 21% of respondents. Snapchat and WhatsApp were at 16%, and X/Twitter at 10%. (Interestingly, the BBC is still a source, with 36% saying they continue to use it for news, but it stands out as the only one.)
The UK findings largely mirror trends seen in the US, with a Pew Research survey earlier this year finding that roughly half of TikTok users under 30 said they get their political and news content from the video app.
Don't trust the process
This trend should not be taken lightly. The growth of the Internet and user-generated content is accompanied by a faster and looser idea of what constitutes news, and how it can be used.
The election cycle remains the most sensitive example. Earlier this year, during the UK general election, Ofcom reported that 60% of respondents to a survey said they had seen false or misleading information, and 10% said they had seen this type of content “several times a day.”
Additionally, 57% of respondents said they are concerned about being scammed by deepfake content, and 27% said they have already experienced some type of scam.
To be fair, as the table below shows, TV, newspapers and radio still have a lot of work to do to earn consumers’ trust. A bigger effort is to make sure that news isn’t just a race to the bottom.
