RELIGIOUS news is not exempt from the challenges set out in a new report on the future of news, which warns of a steep decline in trust, the Bishop of Leeds, the Rt Revd Nick Baines, has said.
Bishop Baines is a member of the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, which published the report last week. It draws on data from the Reuters Institute indicating that, between 2015 and 2024, the overall proportion of people in the UK saying that they trust “most news most of the time” fell from 51 to 36 per cent. The proportion of people extremely or very interested in news fell from 70 to 38 per cent over the same period.
‘I bring glad tidings on X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. . .’
The report concludes that the UK has a “vibrant press”. About 96 per cent of UK adults say that they watch, read, or listen to news in some form, and a few large outlets have a “reasonably viable financial future”, it says. In 2023, The Daily Telegraph and The Times accounted for 41 per cent of all UK news subscriptions.
But advertising revenues for local publishers fell by 70 per cent between 2010 and 2020, and it is estimated that 4.1 million UK residents live in a “local-news desert”, defined as “a local authority area that has no dedicated local news outlet, whether print, online, radio or TV”.
The CEO of Enders Analysis, Douglas McCabe, warned the committee of the development of a “two-tier” media environment, where the decline of “popular” journalism meant that a growing proportion of society had limited engagement with professionally produced news — absorbing instead “whatever they can pick up online”. Andrew Neil, the former chairman of the board of The Spectator, noted the polarisation visible in US broadcasting, and warned that people might shift to “things that are more congenial to their way of looking at things”.
The report itself suggests that the rise of alternative providers such as GB News should prompt public-service broadcasters to reflect on “how this relates to the way underserved communities are represented in their own news coverage”.
It says that there is a “realistic possibility of the media environment fracturing along social, geographic, economic and political lines within the next five to ten years”.
Last week, Bishop Baines said: “In terms of religious and media literacy, everyone needs to be healthily and enquiringly sceptical about what they read or hear and how it is framed — and by whom and for what purpose. The challenge to religious media is that they have to have a credibility and reach beyond their own constituency if they are to help people understand the world they live in.
“However, the narrowing of focus caused by the siloed access driven by social media is concerning. So is the wild behaviour of some Christians in social media — people who post as if they are talking to a couple of people, whilst in doing so betraying the faith they claim to own.”
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