TOI remains India’s most trusted news brand: Reuters Inst

NEW DELHI: The Times of India, the world’s largest English language newspaper, has once again come out on top as the most trusted among major news media brands in India, according to a 46-country survey conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ). It had topped the list last year, too, with a trust score of 74 – the 2022 survey gives it an even higher 75. TOI stands head and shoulders above the rest – the next seven brands are clustered in narrow band of 72 to 70.

While there are no cross-country comparisons, TOI’s immense trustworthiness can be gauged from the fact that the most trusted brand in the UK, BBC News, had a score of 55, and the most trusted paper in that country, the Financial Times, 52. In the US, local TV news had the highest trust score of 54, while the Wall Street Journal scored 43, New York Times 41, CNN and Washington Post 39.
The survey is also testimony to the trust enjoyed by Times Group newspapers – tied at No. 2 with All India Radio is TOI’s sister publication, The Economic Times.
In general, in India print brands were more prominent at the top of the trust scores than other media, with the exception of All India Radio, Doordarshan and BBC News. In the West, as evident from the US and UK examples, the pattern was very much the reverse with television brands topping the trust charts. This isn’t entirely surprising, given that India had the highest proportion of respondents (49%) who used print media as a source of news.
In general, too, trust in news has grown in India compared to elsewhere. The report showed that this trust had dropped across the world, with 42% of the total sample for all media markets saying they trust most news most of the time compared to 44% in the last survey. In India, on the other hand, it went up by three percentage points.
About a third of the respondents in India saw news organisations as being politically far apart, a smaller proportion than in the US (41%) or UK (37%), but a much larger proportion than in Japan (26%) or South Korea (15%).
In India, the respondents were mainly English-speaking, online news users, leaning towards a more affluent, younger, educated, and city-dwelling population. The survey, released as part of Digital News Report 2022, an annual publication of the Reuters Institute – which is part of Oxford University – reflects, at least in part, the opinions and attitudes of this section. The survey in India was conducted in collaboration with the Asian College of Journalism.