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How People Get Their News
An explanation of news habits, trust and impartiality in the Reuters Institute's 2026 audience research.
An explanation of news habits, trust and impartiality in the Reuters Institute's 2026 audience research.
How a story reaches a reader and whether that reader trusts it are separate questions. The Reuters Institute's 2026 Digital News Report findings, published on 16 June 2026, help explain both. Its results describe audience habits and attitudes across the markets studied. They provide context for reading news, rather than a verdict on whether an individual article is accurate.
Keep the question behind each finding in view. Using a platform, watching a video, trusting news and preferring impartial coverage measure different things. Treating them as interchangeable can make a striking headline sound more conclusive than the research supports.
Across 48 markets in its 2026 report, the Reuters Institute found that social media and video networks were used for online news by 54% of respondents, ahead of news organisations' own websites and apps at 51%. This was the first time platforms led at that overall level, although the report says the pattern had existed in some countries for several years.
These figures describe routes to news. They should not be read as a choice that divides everyone into separate platform and publisher audiences. When following a story encountered in a feed, ask who produced it and whether the post provides enough context to understand the underlying report.
The Reuters Institute's 2026 findings also put weekly online news video consumption at 77% across its markets. A useful reading habit is to distinguish the presentation from the claim: identify what a clip actually establishes, and look for the full account before drawing a wider conclusion.
The Reuters Institute reported in 2026 that 10% of people used artificial intelligence chatbots for news, compared with 7% in the previous year's report. Its 2026 figure for people under 35 was 16%. The institute described use as concentrated among younger audiences and people with a stronger interest in news.
Those findings measure adoption, rather than the accuracy of a chatbot's answer. A summary can serve as a starting point for questions, but evaluate its supporting material separately. Check the date of the underlying report, identify the publisher and read enough surrounding text to understand the claim being summarised.
In its 2026 report, the Reuters Institute put overall trust in news at 37%, the lowest level it had recorded since measurement began in 2015. Its 2026 United States finding was 25% for people who said they trusted news most of the time. These are reported attitudes toward news, not a count of factual errors.
The Reuters Institute's 2026 findings put concern about fake news at 62% on average. Concern and trust should be considered separately: being worried about misinformation does not tell a reader which particular statement is wrong. For a disputed claim, focus on the evidence offered and on whether the conclusion follows from it.
The institute also reported in 2026 that trust in widely used individual news brands held up better than trust in news overall. That distinction cautions against treating an overall trust figure as a judgment on every publisher or every article.
In the Reuters Institute's 2026 findings, 45% of respondents preferred news that did not take sides, while 46% believed such news was best for others in society. Personal preference and a view about society are related questions, but they are not identical.
For readers, impartiality is a useful prompt to examine how an account handles evidence. Does it distinguish established facts from interpretation? Does it explain the limits of the information available? Audience preferences alone cannot answer those questions. The practical task remains to read a claim carefully and judge the support supplied for it.