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Online News Highly Trusted by 40% Worldwide; Second Only to WOM in UK

Online news sites are now second only to recommendations from friends as the primary trusted source of information in the U.K., and are “highly trusted”* sources of information by 40% of people in 16 countries surveyed, including the U.S., TNS found.

According to the TNS survey, online news is highly trusted by two-fifths (40%) of those in the U.K. - second only to word-of-mouth recommendations, which were highly trusted by nearly half (45%) of respondents, writes Marketing Charts.

Three quarters (76%) of those surveyed worldwide say that they had ‘looked up the news’ when asked what they had done online in the last month, further emphasizing the growing importance of online news sites, TNS reports.

While almost two fifths (38%) of those in the U.K. highly trust TV news, there were differences across countries. Just under a quarter (24%) of Italians and French highly trust their TV news, TNS said.

Regarding printed newspapers, less than a quarter (23%) of U.K. respondents highly trusted newspapers, the lowest score among all 16 countries. The average of those highly trusting newspapers for all countries was just under two-fifths (39%). However, traditional press seemed to be most trusted by respondents in Finland (69%), Japan (50%), Sweden (49%) and China (49%).

Respondents in the U.K. are more critical of user-generated web-based resources such as blogs, with just 6% of Brits highly trusting a private blog, compared with all other countries surveyed (average of 10%). Blogs were the least trusted news source in the survey.

Wikipedia (24%) is as highly trusted as newspapers (23%) by U.K. respondents although some countries are even more trusting of this source, with more than half (52%) of German respondents highly trusting this online source of information.

“It’s interesting to see how trusted online news is – with consumers clearly understanding the difference between which online channels can be trusted and which cannot,” said Arno Hummerston, managing director, TNS Global Interactive. “Instead of fighting the web revolution, newspapers seem to be trying to move their business models online, and it seems as though the combination of quality content and a recognized brand name is working, with readership figures of most national newspaper websites up over the last year.”

* highly trusted is defined as giving a score of 8,9 or 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is “Do not trust at all” and 10 is “trust completely.”