95bFM New report shows trust in the news is improving
16 April, 2025
Interview by Castor Chacko, adapted by Sanat Singh
Head of Journalism at AUT and co-author of a report into trust in news media in Aotearoa, Greg Treadwell, says premature findings showing trust within news reporting is on the mend.
A recently released report 'Trust in news in New Zealand,' aiming to understand the relationship between news media and the public, shows increasing trust in news media.
This follows prior findings showing decreasing trust in news media and reporting. 2020 findings show that 53% of New Zealanders trust most of the news most of the time, however, by 2024, this had dropped to 33%.
In 2025 however, trust was down by just 1%.
Head of Journalism at AUT and co-author of this report, Dr Greg Treadwell, told 95bFM’s The Wire, that despite these recent findings, it is too early to tell if this trust will remain consistent.
“Look, these are early indicators of stabilising trust in news, no guarantee. We need a couple more years to see where the trend's actually going.”
Despite this, Treadwell mentions there are other positive signs in the report showing growing trust in news media in the country.
“We also ask about a number of news brands in New Zealand and trust in all New Zealand news brands that we ask about have risen significantly for the 2025 research.”
“It feels like trust in news is bottoming out, which, you know, there's a lot to do, but that's the first step towards ensuring we have a public sphere worthy of calling itself democratic.”
Treadwell says the broad implications of fewer people having confidence in news reporting poses the question of the health of New Zealand’s democracy.
“If we continue to have such high levels of self-reported mistrust in [the] media, we're really not going to be talking about the same thing when it comes to elections and other democratic issues.”
“Democracy happens 365 days a year, not just on election day. So we need reliable, verified information, which largely I believe we're getting.”
He says this extends to if trust in the media was extremely strong, such as at 99% — as accountability is important in reporting.
“[Trust in the media being at 99%] would be a nightmare for democracy.”
“That would [mean] an uncritical audience, an uncritical electorate, and a non-thinking population. That's worse than the worst kind of mass obedience scenarios you could ever imagine.”
The study also asks about AI usage regarding news reporting, as Treadwell says AI is changing the way newsrooms fulfil their roles.
The report asks how comfortable New Zealanders are with the idea of news produced by human journalists with AI assistance, with 26% of respondents responding they are comfortable with that idea and 35% responding that they were uncomfortable.
He emphasises that the way AI is being used needs to be carefully considered — especially in evaluative moments with politics or fairness.
“A journalist might use AI in the preparation of a story, might ask AI for background, might ask AI who's the most common person to discuss this issue, or what's an appropriate academic to answer these questions. And that kind of base-level research, even that you can't trust AI on. It makes mistakes all the time.”
When asked about what the media can do to improve its relationship with the public those in the report put transparency at the top of the list.
Treadwell and co-author of the report, Dr Merja Myllylahti, believe in the last few years news media has started to engage with the concerns the public has with transparency, accountability, facing up to mistakes, and concerns about the trust between the public and news reporting.
As well as this, Treadwell says better representation of minority groups will go a long way in allowing people to value and trust the news.
