Five of the biggest news publishers in the UK and US have increased their core Tiktok followings by more than two million people in just over 18 months.

Press Gazette has updated our ranking of the biggest and fastest-growing news publisher Tiktok accounts, having last done so in January 2023.

The analysis features the 70 news publishers from Press Gazette’s most recent lists of the 50 biggest UK and US news websites that were found on Tiktok. 

Nineteen of the publishers are not included in the growth comparisons as they were not included in our previous analysis – with some of those likely to have been more recent sign-ups to Tiktok. 

The rankings look at each publisher’s main account only but it should be acknowledged that some news outlets create separate accounts for different verticals.

Reuters and The New York Times saw by far and away the biggest percentage increase in their Tiktok following during the period, but this is due to their small followings at the start of 2023.

Among those with over 100,000 followers at the time of our last update, the 371% growth seen by BBC News was the largest.

CNN (238%), GB News (221%), Yahoo News (218%), CNBC (205%) and The Independent (204%) were the other larger accounts to more than triple their follower count.

There was also some impressive growth for local news sites such as the Liverpool Echo (204%) and the Manchester Evening News (193%), though Newcastle’s Chronicle Live (464%) remains small (6,200 followers) despite that growth.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Washington Post (13%) and The Telegraph (14%) took the least advantage of TikTok’s growth.

In terms of absolute growth, there was no matching the Daily Mail, which added 5.6 million new followers over the period. This was more than two million more than any other news publisher in our analysis.

Insider, a section of Business Insider, was a distant second place, adding a still impressive 3.5 million new followers in the period.

CNN (3.1 million), Sky News (2.9 million) and BBC News (2.9 million) also added more than two million followers each since the start of 2023.

The New York Times added almost 750,000 followers from a starting point of under 5,000, while Reuters added over 175,000 from a base of less than 1,000.

Who are the biggest news publishers on Tiktok in the UK and US?

The Daily Mail, which was in third place behind ABC News in January 2023, is now leading the way at the top with nearly ten million followers for its main account on the platform at the time of writing. (Between our data collection and time of publication, it has now surpassed ten million.)

One of its smaller accounts, Daily Mail UK, which has 980,800 followers, would still place comfortably in the top half of the outlets considered. It celebrated surpassing ten million across all its accounts, which also include a global news account and others dedicated to crime, sport, royals, showbiz, the US and Australia, in January this year.

It does have a smaller Tiktok following than Ladbible (13.8 million followers on its main account), but although the younger brand was top of the ranking in 2023 it was not included in our latest update as it is not currently ranked in the top 50 news websites in the UK.

Of the 70 newsbrands covered in this analysis, 21 were followed by more than a million people. This was more than the number (19) who had followings below 100,000.

This increased reach comes off the back of further growth for TikTok, which is now used for news by 8% of people in 12 key markets including the UK and US according to the 2024 Reuters Institute Digital News Report - up from 1% in 2020.

Across all countries surveyed where Tiktok operates, it is now used for news by 13% of people - overtaking X/Twitter (10%) for the first time - and 23% of 18 to 24-year-olds, the report found.

However 27% of Tiktok users said they struggle to detect trustworthy news on the site, the highest of all social media platforms covered. And only 34% of Tiktok users said they pay attention to journalists or news media, preferring online influencers and personalities. By contrast, on X 53% of users say they pay attention to journalists or news media.

Note: This article was updated after publication to add Channel 4 News, which we discovered had been wrongly missed off our list of the UK's top 50 publishers and therefore met the criteria for inclusion on this ranking.

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The Reuters Digital News Report provides an unrivalled overview of the key themes newsroom leaders need to be aware of in 2024.

Here is an overview of Press Gazette coverage rounding up the key take-homes:

• Trust in news up slightly in UK but remains lower than global average
  
• Podcasts are ‘a bright spot for publishers’ despite remaining ‘minority activity’
  
• Where do people find their news in 2024? Social media has become the new global newsstand
  
• News influencers on social media have become a major theme: And they are nearly all men
  
• Online news subscriptions stagnate amid jump in numbers saying they would never pay
  
• US news trends 2024: Interest and trust in news slowly recovering
  
• News avoidance at record levels as four in ten ‘worn out’ by news

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Why do male voices dominate when it comes to news influencers on social media? The Reuters Institute Digital News Report asked a representative sample in Britain and the US to name any individual social media accounts they follow when it comes to news content and found that in both the UK and US all ten of the most popular news influencers were men.

When Press Gazette shared the list on Twitter, radio presenter Louise Hulland suggested a list of female news influencers: Victoria Derbyshire from the BBC, Emily Maitlis from Global, Shelagh Fogarty (BBC), Sophy Ridge from LBC and Beth Rigby from Sky.

ITV newsreader Marverine Cole noted that women of colour were also missing from the list. She said: “So many excellent female news broadcasters out there, across the board. Big question is how can that balance be achieved where weight and support (as revenue?) is put behind top female news and current affairs voices and faces?”.

And Sky News digital assistant Talya Varga suggested colleagues including Sophie Ridge, Yalda Hakim and Alex Crawford would be good female additions to the list.

In 2023, Press Gazette compiled a list of 180 UK journalists with more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. Nine out of the top ten most-followed individuals were men with Laura Kuenssberg from the BBC in fifth spot with 1.41 million followers.

The Collabstr 2024 Influence Marketing Report looked at 80,000 influencer profiles across major social media platforms globally and found that 70% are from women. However, these female influencers often orient their content towards beauty and lifestyle, rather than news.

According to The Missing Perspectives of Women in News Report in 2020, women remain a minority in newsrooms globally, especially when it comes to senior newsroom roles in the UK and US.

Press Gazette asked postdoctoral research fellow Amy Ross Arguedas, who helped write the 2024 Reuters Digital News Report, to explain the findings.

She said: “The gender imbalance, when it comes to top individual news-related accounts, is striking, especially when keeping in mind that women tend to be heavier users of social media in general.

“This is the case across all five countries analysed, where we see men almost exclusively dominate these lists of top five or ten news-related accounts mentioned.

“There are variety of factors that could be shaping this, both on the supply and demand side, many of which are impacted by gender norms and disparities in the broader culture. For example, on the demand side, it is possible that many audiences prefer following men for news on social and video platforms.

“Many of the individual accounts mentioned are largely focused on politics and political commentary, a traditionally male-dominated subject, and that might be magnifying the trend we see in the data. It’s also worth keeping in mind that this is a survey of audience perceptions and subject to recall biases, so another possibility is that people defaulted to providing examples of accounts centered on political topics when answering the question, even as they may also follow other kinds of accounts focused on more ‘soft’ news.

“Some of this could also be driven by the supply side of things, meaning there could be more men producing this kind of news-oriented content, and especially politics-focused content, on social media. Some research shows women are underrepresented in bylines of political news topics and this could be an extension of more traditional newsroom gender dynamics (which in turn can also be driven by unequal allocation of beats by newsroom managers as well as journalists’ preferences).

“However, there is also a lot of research documenting the online harassment of women journalists, often through social media (which can in some cases escalate to other forms of violence), and which could disincentivize more women from doing this kind of work online.”

We also asked Marverine Cole to expand on the comments she shared via X about the report. Cole is a newsreader for ITV’s Good Morning Britain and worked in broadcasting for 20 years.

She said: “I think the reason it is happening is because of the old adages that: men dominate generally in journalism, and media presenting; they are platformed more readily and white men in particular, men’s viewpoints are held paramount above women’s and women having any opinion often get shouted down and belittled when it comes to news topics, and we generally get abused for having one, full stop.

“Then when it comes to female journalists of colour we are few and far between in the industry anyway, so we’re even less likely to be hired, let alone be listened to, commissioned or promoted in this space. I started my politics podcast to have a ‘dog in the fight’ because I knew no-one was ever going to commission or resource me to do it, so I did it myself and carve my own path and narrative… I get appreciation for talking about things in a way, no other podcast is.”

Former BBC and Vice journalist Sophia Smith Galer has more than 500,000 follower on Tiktok.

Asked whether she thinks female influencers are being silenced by men, she said: “I’m not sure this is the case. I am confident that on Twitter it is mainly men who retweet each other and women retweet each other as that is what research has suggested.

“Male news influencers aren’t the problem – I would be asking news bosses about what they are doing to amplify women both internally and externally, and what they have done in the last year to serve women audiences.

“We also know from non-fiction readership that women are far more likely to read a book by men than the other way round. There is a fundamental issue here both with how women are amplified in journalism and their career progression; there’s also an issue with how much appetite men have as news audiences to pay attention to women.

“That’s not a problem of a select few high profile men online – that’s a problem of all men.”.

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Trust in news in the UK increased by three percentage points in the past year, according to the latest Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

In the UK 36% of more than 2,000 survey respondents said they trust most news most of the time – up from 33% last year.

However the UK’s trust level is down long-term, from 51% in 2015, with a low point of 28% in 2020.

How has trust in news changed globally?

Trust among the 47 countries included in the 2024 study averaged at 40%, with Finland having the highest (69%) and Greece and Hungary the lowest (23%).

The UK saw was ranked 25th out of 47 countries.

Few European countries saw growth in the past year, including the UK, Greece (up four percentage points) and France (up 1pp).

The Netherlands, Austria and Poland saw falls in trust of three percentage points each, while Romania saw a 5pp fall.

The most growth was seen in Asia-Pacific countries, specifically, Hong Kong (+16pp), Thailand (+3pp), India (+3%), Taiwan (+5pp) and South Korea (+3pp).

Which newsbrands do Brits trust?

Public opinions on brand trust in the UK remained largely unchanged since last year, with the BBC ranked the most trustworthy by the public (62%).

The least trustworthy was again The Sun, with 63% respondents saying that they wouldn’t trust it, although this was an improvement from 66% last year.

Does AI impact our levels of trust?

The report's findings indicated that those who trusted the news in general also appeared to be those who were more comfortable with AI being used as long as journalists remain in control.

But the UK scored the lowest of all countries for the proportion of people comfortable with the use of AI in news.

The report suggested this may be because “British press coverage of AI... has been characterised as overly negative and sensationalist.”

In the UK 10% of people said they would be comfortable with using news produced mostly by AI, with 63% uncomfortable. In the US 23% said they would be comfortable with AI-produced news and 52% were uncomfortable.

The report said: "We also find that people with greater AI awareness tend to feel relatively more comfortable with the use of AI in journalism. While still very low, comfort using news made mostly by AI is twice as high among those who have seen or heard more about AI (26%) relative to those who have seen less (13%).

"We see a similar gap when asking about comfort using news produced mostly by a human journalist with some help from AI (45% versus 30%)."

The UK was also ranked one of the highest in terms of the proportion of respondents who said they were worried about what is real and what is fake on the internet, at 70%.

But regionally, Western and Northern Europe were identified as areas with the lowest concern among citizens.

What influences trust globally?

The report found four main factors influencing trust across countries and ages:

1. High journalistic standards (72%)
2. Transparent about how the news is made (69%)
3. Lack of bias (65%)
4. Fairness in media representation (61%)

Those who identified their political orientation as ‘left’, ‘centre’ or ‘right’ ranked the factors influencing trust highly. Those who ‘didn’t know’ their political orientation were far less sure what was important for them in deciding which news outlet to trust, with each of the four main factors ranked roughly 20 percentage points lower than the average.

Generally, across all 47 countries included in the survey, those with low incomes, low levels of formal education, and younger people tended to trust the news less.

The report stated: “These are also groups that are often less well served by the news media, and generally less likely to think that the media cover people like them fairly..."

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Nearly half of American and Spanish respondents to the 2024 Reuters Institute Digital News Report reported listening to a podcast in the previous month — the highest reach for the format among 20 countries surveyed.

Spain and the US (both 44%) were closely followed by Ireland and Sweden (43%) and Norway and Portugal (42%).

The UK (31%) came in 15th, behind Italy (32%) and ahead of the Netherlands (31%) and Germany (30%).

Podcasts had the least reach in any of the countries examined in Japan, where just over a quarter of respondents reported listening to a podcast monthly.

News podcasts struggle to grow market share, but overall podcast listenership growing

Although a "minority activity overall", the Digital News Report authors described podcasting as a "bright spot for publishers", with 13% of all respondents internationally saying they accessed a news or current affairs podcast specifically each month compared to 12% last year.

Across all countries, 35% of people said they were accessing any kind of podcast monthly, compared to 34% in 2023.

Although the overall proportion of people listening to podcasts has grown, the authors noted that "the share of podcast listening for news shows has remained roughly the same as it was seven years ago".

In the 2023 report the US was the country with the highest proportion of listeners using podcasts for news, with 19% of respondents accessing a news podcast monthly compared with 12% internationally. However country-specific data for news podcast listenership has not been broken out in the 2024 report.

Podcasts attracting younger, educated, wealthier and disproportionately male listeners

The authors wrote that podcasts are being used by publishers as “a way of addressing the engagement challenge” as a format that is “less immediately reliant on platform algorithms”.

However they also observed that podcasts "attract younger, richer and better educated audiences, with news and politics shows heavily skewed towards men" — something they attribute in part to "the dominance of male hosts".

Whereas 32% of women surveyed reported listening to a podcast monthly, it was 39% among men.

As has been observed previously, podcasts have much higher reach among younger consumers. Whereas a majority of respondents aged 18 to 24 and 25 to 34 said they listen to podcasts monthly, the percentage falls to 44% among those aged between 35 and 44, 32% among those 45 to 54 and 20% among those aged 55 and above.

[Read more: Podcasts continue to grow in popularity in UK as BBC reveals data insights]

The format is disproportionately used by better-educated people, with 47% of degree holder respondents saying they listen to podcasts versus 35% of low or medium educated respondents.

And income also correlates strongly to podcast listenership, with 44% of "high income" respondents listening to a podcast monthly compared with 29% of low earners.

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News consumers across the world are increasingly far more likely to access news via social media than they are by directly accessing publisher websites and apps.

The 2024 Reuters Digital News Report surveyed news consumers in 47 leading markets around the world with over 2,000 respondents in each territory (big exclusions included China and Russia).

Across all leading global media markets, social media is the main gateway to news for 29% of people (up from 23% six years ago, but slightly down compared with last year).

Search (dominated by Google) remains important, with 25% citing this as their main access point to news, compared to 24% in 2018.

There has been a sharp decline in the proportion saying that direct access to publisher websites and apps is their main access point for news, down from 32% six years ago to 22% in the latest survey.

Looking at UK sources of news, social media is now cited by 37% of respondents as the main way they came across news in the last week versus 14% for print. TV has declined from 79% to 50% over the last decade.

In the UK there has been a sharp fall in the number of 18 to 24 year-olds accessing news websites or apps directly, from 53% to 25% over the last decade.

The fall amongst 25 to 34 year-olds has been less sharp, down from 53% to 34%. For those aged 35 and above, publisher websites and apps have remained important, with 51% saying they used them over the last week, a figure which has remained level.

Looking at 11 leading media economies, the survey asked which social media networks people have used to access news over the last week.

Facebook remains the most popular source of news, but it has declined from 36% in 2014 citing it to 26% in the latest survey.

Youtube has grown from 16% to 22%, Whatsapp is up from 7% to 16% and Instagram is up from 2% to 15%. Twitter/X is steady on around 11% and Tiktok has grown sharply after emerging four years ago to be used by 8% for accessing news.

Looking at particular newsbrands and sources of news, the survey underlines the dominance of the BBC over the UK media scene. The BBC is also the only UK brand cited by a significant number of US survey respondents as a source they access on at least a weekly basis.

Looking at TV/radio/print, the BBC is twice as popular (48%) as second-placed ITV News. Looking at online it is nearly three times as likely to be cited (44%) as the second-placed Guardian website.

In the US, opinionated right of centre brand Fox News is the most likely to be cited as a weekly source for both online and looking at just TV/radio/print. Overall, US newsbrands are far more evenly split in terms of popularity.

The report found that in the UK mainstream news brands are most likely to be cited as a source of news by social media users, versus alternative news outlets and influencers.

Online native brand Politics Joe made the top five most-referenced outlets in the UK survey behind legacy brands BBC News, Sky News, The Guardian and ITV News.

When survey respondents to ask individual news accounts they pay attention to for news on social media, partisan and outspoken voices dominated and in both the UK and US all the named social media accounts cited by survey respondents were men.

See more on this phenomenon of “news influencers” from Digital News Report author Nic Newman here.

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In recent years large social and video networks, offering powerful creator tools and free global distribution, have provided a platform for an increasingly wide range of voices and perspectives. Most of this content has nothing to do with news. Much of it generates very little attention, but some accounts and individuals have become increasingly influential around politics, and a range of other subjects  

In previous research we have shown how in newer networks such as TikTok and Instagram as well as in long standing video platforms like YouTube, mainstream media are significantly challenged by a range so called creators, influencers, and assorted personalities, as well as smaller, alternative news outlets. This contrasts with networks such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) where mainstream media and journalists still tend to lead the conversation when it comes to news.

Who are the biggest ‘news influencers’ in the UK, US and France?

In this year’s Digital News Report, we wanted to understand more about who these news influencers are, what type of ‘news’ they discuss, and what this means for wider society. 

We did this by asking a random selection of people who use a range of popular networks including Facebook, X, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to name up to three mainstream and/or alternative accounts they followed most closely that related to news.

We then counted the most popular individuals and news brands from the combined data. We did this in around 20 countries around the world, but in this article, we explore findings in just three – the United Kingdom, the United States and France. 

United Kingdom: High representation of 'mainstream' journalists

Traditional UK news brands established an early and strong presence in social media networks such as Twitter (now X) and Facebook, but have been slower to adapt to newer networks.

Despite this, across all networks studied we find that the majority (57%) of all mentions were for mainstream news brands and their journalists and 43% for other individuals and alternative media.

Big broadcasters such as the BBC and Sky do best, along with The Guardian, but these brands are more challenged in YouTube and TikTok by a range of youth orientated outlets such as Politics Joe, LADbible, and TLDR News – and also by more partisan political outlets such as Novara Media and individual creators.

[Read more: Video brand TLDR finds way to make money providing news for the young]

When it comes to our list of top ten individual accounts, we also find a high representation of journalists from mainstream media brands.

Topping the list is LBC’s James O’Brien who has been particularly effective on YouTube and TikTok with smartly packaged video clips from his radio show regularly going viral. ITV’s political correspondent Robert Peston, an early adopter of social media, is in second place.

Also represented is former CNN, ITV, and TalkTV host Piers Morgan who recently took his eponymous Uncensored show online-only to get round what he calls the "unnecessary straitjacket" of TV schedules.

There is a clear absence of women in the most-mentioned list. Partisan perspectives are provided, on the left, by columnist and author Owen Jones and on the right by TV hosts from GB News. These include Nigel Farage, now leader of Reform UK, and Neil Oliver, whose controversial views on lockdowns and vaccinations have led to complaints to the broadcast regulator Ofcom. 

 
Comedian Russell Brand attracts an eclectic crowd for his outspoken, libertarian and anti-mainstream media views expressed manly via YouTube (and Rumble).

Sports journalists David Ornstein and Fabrizio Romano, both with a reputation for transfer scoops, are widely followed, as are others with specialist knowledge such as Dan Neidle, a former high-profile lawyer who breaks stories about dodgy tax affairs of the rich and famous. 

Influencer Dylan Page operates what he claims is the biggest English language news account on TikTok (10.6 million followers).

Celebrities, such as BBC football presenter and podcast entrepreneur Gary Lineker (nine million followers on X) tweet from time to time about politics and refugees and Elon Musk’s tweets (150 million followers) are also widely followed in the UK. 

United States: Much higher use of YouTube for news

We see a very different picture in the United States with much higher use of use of YouTube for news compared with the UK and a higher proportion of those users paying attention to alternative news sources.

X (formerly Twitter) is another important network for alternative voices in the US, where creators have been encouraged in recent years by owner Elon Musk. The network has recently refocused its strategy on video and is supporting commentators like Tucker Carlson, who was dismissed by Fox News, and has subsequently built a significant audience there.

Our list of the most mentioned individuals is headed by Carlson along with Joe Rogan who runs a successful daily show on YouTube (as well as Spotify).

It is striking that all of the most mentioned (top ten) individual names are known for political commentary or chat - rather than original newsgathering. Most of the content is partisan – with little or no attempt to put the other side, and the entire top ten list is made up of men.

Many of these names can hardly be called ‘alternative’, as they often come with decades of experience from legacy media, having previously been fixtures for years on traditional cable or talk radio networks.  

Some of these US individuals are attached to wider online networks, such as the Daily Wire and Blaze TV (conservative) and Young Turks and Medias Touch (progressive) that contain multiple creators within a wider brand. 

But whatever the politics, the look is remarkably consistent – somewhere between a podcast and a TV broadcast – with mostly male hosts armed with oversized microphones talking to mostly male guests.

Alternative voices received more citations in total from our US sample than traditional media, but mainstream media brands and their journalists still accounted for 42% of mentions with CNN and Fox News heading the list.  

On TikTok, however, alternative news approaches are also prominent, such as @underthedesknews, an account which features creator V Spehar presenting news updates from a lying down position to contrast with the formulaic ‘over the desk’ approach on mainstream TV. The account has over three million subscribers with content aimed at explaining current events and news for younger audiences. 

Elon Musk regularly posts content on subjects such as free speech, AI, and the failings of mainstream media. Donald Trump was also frequently mentioned and has 65 million followers on X and 6.5 million on Truth Social. 

France: Young news influencers lead the way

In France, we find mainstream media challenged on social and video platforms by a range of alternative media including a number of young news influencers.

Head and shoulders above others we find YouTuber and podcaster Hugo Travers, 27, known online as Hugo Décrypte, (literally Hugo Deciphers … the news). With 2.6 million subscribers on his main channel on YouTube and 5.7 million on TikTok, he has become a leading news source for young French people.  

In our survey data, Décrypte received more mentions than Le Monde, Le Figaro and Liberation combined. His followers had an average age of 27, around 20 years younger than many other news brands according to our data. Travers regularly interviews top politicians and global figures such as Bill Gates. The social media generation “won’t start reading a newspaper or watching the news on TV at 30,” he says.

Youth focused news brands such as Brut and Konbini have also built large audiences via social and video distribution. This level of engagement highlights the weakness of many traditional French news brands, which still primarily cater for older elites and have been slow to innovate through social platforms.

Protecting the environment has become an important theme for alternative voices with Hugo Clément (32) and Salomé Saqué (28) two prominent voices, who have built their ecological reputations through social media.

Meanwhile many older, male, right learning commentators, such as Pascal Praud and former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, are extending their influence through like-minded and mostly older communities on X and Facebook.

Far right politicians such as Marine Le Pen (one million followers on TikTok) and her 28 year old protégé  Jordan Bardella (1.6 million) were also mentioned in our data as the National Rally leader successfully targeted the youth vote ahead of the European elections. 

Implications for mainstream media from news influencer findings

Looking across our three selected countries we find that news related accounts of any kind are cited more often in the United States than they are in the UK or France.

In the United States we also find a greater number of alternative news or individual accounts mentioned as opposed to mainstream news brands and journalists, suggesting that the trend towards news influencers is far more developed here.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast mainstream media brands and journalists are both active and widely followed leaving less of a gap for independent operators. 

Digging further into the content itself, we find that many of the most cited accounts belong to partisan political commentators (from left and right), some of whom have been criticised for factual inaccuracies and for spreading conspiracies or misleading narratives, even as they are highly trusted by those who share their political views.

Many of the commentators now committed to online distribution emphasise their ability to speak freely (e.g. Tucker Carlson Unfiltered, Piers Morgan Uncensored), setting themselves up as an alternative to a mainstream media that they say ‘suppresses the truth’ or is driven by ‘elite and corporate interests’. But any increase in the range of views is not matched by diversity, with the most popular accounts mostly white and male in the three countries included here. 

A second important trend is the popularity of news creators and influencers that speak to younger audiences, mostly using video formats. In France Hugo Décrypte is blazing a trail in trying to make news more accessible and entertaining. Elsewhere brands such as Brut, Politics Joe, and TLDR News are engaging a large number of under 35s using younger hosts, as well as an agenda that includes more content about climate, social justice and mental health.

The vitality of alternative voices in social and video networks in some ways highlights perceived weaknesses of news organisations on such issues as trust, diversity, and digital storytelling – at least with some people. All this means that traditional media still has much to learn on how to better engage audiences in this increasingly complex and competitive space while staying true to its mission and values.

You can read more detail about news consumption across countries and about wider audience trends at www.digitalnewsreport.org/2024.

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The average proportion of people paying for online news across 20 key markets has stagnated, staying at 17% for four years in a row.

The numbers paying for online news subscriptions are up from 10% in 2014 but last grew in 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile 57% now say they would not consider paying anything for online news.

The latest Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said: “Publishers have already signed up many of those prepared to pay, and converted some of the more intermittent payers to ongoing subscriptions or donations. But amid a cost-of-living crisis, it is proving difficult to persuade most of the public to do the same.”

In the UK, just 8% of people said they had paid for online news in the past year - down marginally from 9% a year earlier.

This put the UK dead last in a selection of 20 key "richer" markets by the Reuters Institute.

Among other English-language markets, the US was on 22% with Ireland on 17% and Canada on 15%.

Norway was top of the table with 40% of people paying for online news, followed by Sweden on 31%. At the other end of the ranking Japan saw 9% of people part with cash (no change from last year, when it was joint bottom with the UK). There has been "little movement" in any of these numbers in the past year, the report said.

It added: "Paid models have been a rare bright spot in some of the richer countries in our survey, where publishers still have strong direct connections with readers, but have been difficult to make work elsewhere."

In most of the 20 countries in the survey, the average number of subscriptions among those who do pay for news was just one. The exceptions were the US, Switzerland, Poland and France where people had two subscriptions on average.

Of those who pay for news, there was a also a huge range in the proportions that subscribe to local news. Switzerland (50%), Norway (45%), Sweden (43%) and the Netherlands (40%) were on one end of the spectrum with Poland (3%), Ireland (4%), Portugal (4%) and the UK (8%) at the other end.

Among subscribers, 16% in the UK paid for an international/foreign news outlet, as did 26% in the US.

The report said: "Besides this group of payers, in most markets there is a group willing to pay something if the price and product are right, but it’s only ever a small amount – and perhaps not enough to be attractive for publishers."

Brits least likely to want to pay anything for online news

The UK also had the highest proportion (69%) who admitted they would not be willing to pay anything for online news - up from 65% last year.

Of those who don't currently pay anything, 15% said they might pay up to £5 per month, 10% said they would pay £1 or less a month, and just 4% would pay up to £10.

The proportions saying they would not be willing to pay anything also grew in other countries, with the average across the 20 markets rising from 42% to 57%.

In Germany this unwillingness jumped from 54% to 68% and in the US it was up from 49% to 56%.

The report said this "continued reluctance to pay for news" was "linked to low interest and an abundance of free sources".

The study also found evidence of heavy discounting still being deployed to try and encourage people to become subscribers, with 41% currently paying less than full price for their online news package. This is according to Digital News Report estimates based on who people said they subscribe to and how much they said they pay compared to the latest advertised subscription prices.

In the UK, 41% said they pay less than full price, as did 46% in the US. In Poland (78%) and Canada (54%) more than half of news subscribers were paying less than the actual advertised price. On the other end of the spectrum, in France four-fifths of people were paying full price.

However across all 20 markets, just 2% of non-payers said they would pay the equivalent of an average full-price subscription.

The report said: "In markets where the median price of a subscription is higher, such as Switzerland, larger proportions of people are paying less than the full asking price.

"For example, NZZ costs around 29 CHF per month (~US$32), as does Le Temps. But in some other markets where subscriptions are relatively cheaper, such as Spain, Italy, and Portugal, larger proportions are paying the full amount or more. In Spain, a standard El País digital subscription is around €11 (~US$12), and Público in Portugal costs around €7 (~US$7.50)."

The report also noted that in Sweden, where 65% of subscribers are paying full price, shorter trials of just a few months at a free or discounted price appear to be the norm. This contrasts with markets like the US where The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal all offer "inexpensive" one-year trials.

"Cheap trials can be effective in getting sign-ups, but keeping people subscribed is another story," the report noted.

"The jump from a cheap trial to full price is often too much for many. Trial subscribers may not also continue to full price if they didn’t get into the habit of using their subscription."

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Trust and interest in news in the US appear to be slowly recovering from their lows between 2020 and 2022, figures in the 2024 Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism suggest.

A majority of American respondents to the latest annual survey said they were “very” or “extremely” interested in the news, after the figure spent two years below 50% in 2022 and 2023.

Trust in particular newsbrands has also risen across the board, although several brands are yet to regain the levels of trust they recorded five years ago.

Trust in US news outlets improves year-on-year

Overall the percentage of American survey respondents who said they trust the news “most of the time” was 32% this year — the same percentage as in 2023, but up six percentage points on 2022 when it hit a low of 26%.

That rise tracks with a partial return in appetite for news among US audiences. Having remained stable at approximately 67% between 2015 and 2020, the proportion of Americans who said they were "very" or "extremely" interested in news dropped 19 percentage points between 2020 and 2022. It has slowly been recovering since, to 49% in 2023 and 52% this year.

The most trusted newsbrands in the US

Just over half (52%) of US respondents to the survey said they trusted BBC News, ABC News and CBS News, the highest scores for any individual brand. Local television news and regional newspapers in general were the only higher-scoring answers, with 62% of respondents saying they trust their area TV provider and 58% their paper.

The BBC had the lowest "distrust" score of any newsbrand, at 23%, but was closely followed by The Wall Street Journal at 25%. This continues a trend of high trust ratings in the US for the UK public broadcaster.

Subtracting distrust from trust for net trust scores, the figures show a general increase in trust for individual newsbrands across the industry.

Fox News, which previously had a negative score, with more people distrusting it than trusting it, returned to a score of zero.

However taking a longer view, numerous brands have failed to recapture the trust they held in 2020. The BBC, in particular, remains significantly down on previous highs.

Percentage of Americans paying for news edged higher in 2024

The percentage of Americans who report paying for news nudged up to 22%, the highest it has been since the Digital News Report began asking. It had previously dipped from 21% to 19% between 2021 and 2022.

The US remains one of few markets where the average number of news subscriptions is two, along with Switzerland, Poland and France. Almost half (46%) of American subscribers reported paying less than full price for their news subscriptions.

The proportion of Americans saying they get their news online remained steady at 72%. The percentage who said they get news from television, meanwhile, increased for the first time since 2020, when it rose one percentage point to 59% before continuing to decline in 2021 and 2022. This time it increased three percentage points to 51%.

Last year's Digital News Report had put social media and television tied for the first time as a source for Americans' news: however this year social media stalled at 48%. Print also remained at the same percent as in 2023, on 16%.

This year the Reuters Institute asked Americans who use online video for news what kind of videos they are watching, finding both that consumption of all kinds of video content was higher among under-35s and that short-form video — i.e. Tiktok, Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts — has the greatest reach among both older and younger news users.

Nonetheless, a majority of under-35s who get news from video reported using long-form video and live streams for some of their updates.

The proportion of Americans who said they have listened to a podcast in the past month continued to rise, meanwhile. The figure had remained flat at 37% between 2021 and 2022, but rose to 41% in the 2023 Digital News Report and 44% this year.

Fox News remains the US newsbrand with the highest reach among Americans

Local television news continues to be Americans' most-used news source, with a fifth of Americans accessing it three or more times a week offline.

However the individual newsbrand with the greatest reach is Fox News, which is used at least three times a week by 19% of Americans offline — i.e., through televisions — and 12% of Americans online.

It is followed by CNN, which is used three times a week by 15% of Americans offline and 12% online.

Newsmax was included in this year's report for the first time, with 8% of Americans saying they used it for news at least once a week both online and offline.

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The proportion of people selectively avoiding the news is now ten percentage points higher than it was seven years ago, reaching a new high of 39% across 20 key markets.

This is the highest level of news avoidance recorded since the Digital News Report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism began in 2012. Previously the high was 38% in 2022.

In the past year selective news avoidance has grown by three percentage points. The biggest increases were in Ireland (up by ten percentage points to 44%), Spain (+8pp to 37%), Italy (+7pp to 36%), Germany (+5pp to 37%), Finland (+5pp to 26%), the US (+5pp to 43%) and Denmark (+4pp to 23%).

The proportion of people in the UK saying they actively avoid the news sometimes or often is up from 24% in 2017 to 46% in 2024 - the same level as in 2022 although it had seen some improvement to 41% in 2023.

The UK was ninth highest for news avoidance out of 47 markets surveyed. Top of the table were Bulgaria (60%) and Greece (59%).

Just 25% of the 2,017 UK respondents to the Digital News Report survey said they never avoid the news these days.

News avoidance was a bigger phenomenon among women, of whom in the UK 52% said they sometimes or often avoid news compared to 41% of men.

It was relatively even across age groups, affecting 49% of 25 to 34s, 35 to 44s and 45 to 54s. It was also reported by 43% of 18 to 24s and 44% of 55 and overs.

News avoidance triggered by 'depressing' and 'relentless' cycle

One 45-year-old woman in the UK told the Digital News Report: "World news is far too depressing at the moment with most news channels reporting on the same things."

The report added that the news is not just "depressing" - it's "relentless".

Four in ten (39%) people across all markets said they felt "worn out" by the amount of news nowadays, up from 28% in 2019, with coverage of "wars, disasters, and politics" all cited as squeezing out other areas.

"The increase has been greater in Spain (+18pp), Denmark (+16pp), Brazil (+16pp), Germany (+15pp), South Africa (+12pp), France (+9pp), and the United Kingdom (+8pp), but a little less in the United States (+3pp) where news fatigue was a bigger factor five years ago.

"There are no significant differences by age or education, though women (43%) are much more likely to complain about news overload than men (34%)."

The report suggested the increased use of smartphones, push notifications and algorithm-based platform feeds since the Digital News Report began as potential reasons for this overload.

A 71-year-old man in the UK said: "The sheer volume of information is overwhelming. We can be left feeling helpless in the face of another remote disaster, leaving you feeling guilty and impotent."

And a 27-year-old man in the US told the survey: "There’s too much news nowadays... some are fake and some are real, but I get confused and get a headache."

Finland is only country not to see long-term decline in interest in news

The long-term trend in interest in news is down in every country surveyed apart from Finland. In the UK interest in news has almost halved since 2015, with a fall from 70% saying they were extremely or very interested in news then to 38% this year.

"Women and young people make up a significant proportion of that decline," the report said.

The UK's was one of the biggest drops in percentage points, alongside Spain (down from 85% in 2015 to 52%) and Argentina (down from 77% showing interest in news to 45%). However a short-term stabilisation in Argentina (it was lower, on 43%, last year) was put down to presidential election in late 2023.

However, not all countries saw such a big drop in interest. The US, on 52% this year, was down from 67% in 2015 but up from a low of 47% in 2022. The Netherlands and South Korea saw single-figure long-term falls in interest.

Finland was the only country not to see decline in the long-term, going from 64% showing interest in news in 2015 to 65% this year.

Survey respondents were asked what types of news topics they were most interested in. Local and international news were the two most important for all age groups, but while political news was third for 45s and overs, it did not make the top five for 34s and unders. They were more interested instead in environmental and climate change news.

People felt that their interest in topics like sport, politics and business news was generally well met, but that areas like education, environment and social justice were lacking.

Could 'user needs' models help reduce news avoidance?

The Digital News Report noted that numerous newsrooms around the world have introduced "user needs" models aimed at making the news more accessible and engaging by supplementing news updates with stories that "educate, inspire, provide perspective, connect, or entertain".

Almost three-quarters (72%) of people across all markets said news that keeps them up to date with what's going on was most important to them, followed by news that educates them (67%) and news that offers different perspectives (63%).

The report said: "This is pretty consistent across different demographic groups, although the young are a bit more interested in stories that inspire, connect, and entertain when compared with older groups.

"In the United States, for example, over half (52%) of under 35s think having stories that make them feel better about the world is very or extremely important, compared with around four in ten (43%) of over 35s."

The report authors said of the survey data that "taken as a whole, it is clear news consumers would prefer to dial down the constant updating of news, while dialling up context and wider perspectives that help people better understand the world around them.

"Most people don’t want the news to be made more entertaining, but they do want more stories that provide more personal utility, help them connect with others, and give people a sense of hope."

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