Trust in news has stabilised following five years of sharp decline but remains “substantially lower” than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic, new research suggests.
The AUT Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy released its sixth annual Trust in News report this morning following a turbulent year for the media industry.
According to the report, trust in news overall fell one point from 33% last year to 32% this year.
Since the annual survey began in 2020, general trust in New Zealand has fallen by 21 percentage points.
The level of trust in the media in New Zealand is now on par with the United States and below the United Kingdom, the survey suggests.
However, trust in all individual news brands increased this year, with Whakaata Maori, Iwi Radio, RNZ and The Spinoff making the strongest recoveries from last year’s levels.
In 2025, RNZ was perceived as the most trusted news brand, followed by the Otago Daily Times. The equal third-highest trust scores went to TVNZ and NBR.
Both New Zealand’s publicly-owned broadcasters, RNZ and TVNZ, made trust a core part of operations in the past year, with the latter sharing how its newsroom operates and detailing editorial policies.
TVNZ executive news editor Phil O’Sullivan said the broadcaster wanted to show people why they could trust its news by “being really clear about what we do and don’t do”.
RNZ chief executive and editor-in-chief Paul Thompson said his organisation recognised it “had a role to play in rebuilding trust with media overall and it had worked hard on its standards”.
Meanwhile, the survey found the number of people actively avoiding the news fell two percentage points from 75% in 2024 to 73% this year.
Avoidance continues to be higher than in comparable countries.
In terms of most used news sources, 66% of respondents used Stuff one or more times per week, followed by TVNZ (62%) and the NZ Herald (60%).
Social media platforms were also widely used on a weekly basis – Facebook (58%), YouTube (43%), Instagram (38%) and TikTok (17%).
Use of AI
Asked about the use of AI in news, 60% of New Zealanders said they were uncomfortable with news mainly produced by AI with some human oversight.
If the news was mainly produced by a journalist with some help from AI, 35% said they were uncomfortable.
“As newsrooms increasingly use AI, they must be fully open about the use of these tools,” said report co-author Merja Myllylahti.
She said transparency and openness were listed as the most important aspects of trust in news brands.
Surveying for the report was carried out online by Horizon Research and weighted by age, gender, educational qualifications, income, ethnicity and region.
Local news came out as the type New Zealanders were most interested in at 72%, with international news (70%) and political news (62%) not far behind.
Report co-author Greg Treadwell said a desire for local news was clear.
“This is at odds with what is actually happening in the local news industry with large media companies shedding community titles,” he said.