90% of Brits say journalism is important to society, as editors express lack of confidence in ad-supported publishing
Nine in 10 British adults now say journalism is “important to society today” — up 20% from the year before — as AI-driven misinformation and the creator economy have upended the online information ecosystem.
That is according to a poll, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of UK news publishing trade body Newsworks, of 4,000 Brits in October and November of last year.
It found that more than 80% of adults broadly believe it is important that news is created by trained journalists rather than influencers or other forms of user-generated content. A slimmer majority (55%) agreed that professional journalists are more trusted than voices on social media.
However, just 7% of respondents indicated they were confident they can always tell the difference between trained journalists and independent commentators, suggesting a lack of transparency among commenators and/or a lack of media literacy among the public.
The survey also found that a majority of people agree that human editorial judgement is becoming more important in an age of AI (84%) and that journalists play a vital role in tackling misinformation (88%).
“Journalism continues to play a vital role in helping people stay informed, grounded and connected — even as audiences grapple with stress, division and the growing influence of artificial intelligence,” commented Newsworks insight director Heather Dansie.
Despite the public’s supposed care toward trusted media, according to the latest survey conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, most news media executives are lacking confidence about the business prospects for journalism.
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Indeed, just 38% of its sample of 280 editors, CEOs and digital executives say they are confident about the success of the news industry in 2026 — 22 percentage points lower than four years ago, in the midst of the pandemic.
However, just over half (53%) said they are confident about their own business prospects. This is especially true of publishers with strong subscription models and direct traffic figures compared with publishers dependent on advertising and print.
Publishing leaders expressed concerns to senior research associate Nic Newman over politically-motivated attacks on journalism, a loss of financial support for independent media from the likes of USAID, and substantial drops in referral traffic to news sites as consumers turn to AI search for information.
On average, publishers indicated they expect traffic from search engines to decline by more than 40% over the next three years due to Google’s AI Overviews. This comes after some publishers have already reported an average 47.5% decline in click-through rates on desktop and 37.7% on mobile when Google’s AI Overviews are served to users.
Newsworks’ own survey found consumer attitudes toward AI are “cautiously optimistic”, with minorities concerned about its potential negative impacts on critical thinking (37%), the spread of misinformation (32%), and a compromise in personal safety (29%), such as has occurred with Grok generating nude images and CSAM in recent days.
In the face of threats to traffic, the Reuters Institute found that publishers are broadly looking to double down on original reporting and analysis, and prioritise video production. That is despite it requiring the use of third-party platforms, like Meta, that have also reduced referral traffic to news sites in recent years.
In contrast, publishers are generally seeking to deprioritise evergreen content and general news efforts, which many leaders indicated are most likely to be commoditised by chatbot usage.
The main off-platform focus? YouTube, followed by TikTok and Instagram, as publishers again pivot to video.
But the embrace of AV is a tightrope act: publishers are seeking new audiences and to access AV budgets from advertisers, but they risk doing so in a way that could dilute their own trusted brand value, and on platforms where they do not control their audience or the algorithm that dictates who is served what content.
“Shifting too far towards personalities risks undermining some of the characteristics that audiences most value and expect from news media,” commented Newman. “It is also worth noting that most news creators are not competing directly; indeed they still rely on news providers as the basis for their discussions”.
Still, as Newman notes, a mix of declining engagement with news brands and low trust has led public figures “to conclude that they can bypass the media entirely, giving interviews instead to sympathetic podcasters or YouTubers”. He calls this the “Trump 2.0 playbook”, noting it is often “bundled with a barrage of intimidating legal threats against publishers and continuing attempts to undermine trust by branding independent media and individual journalists as ‘fake news’.”
He concludes: “The news industry remains in transition with old models fading and new ones not yet fully formed. Big Tech platforms remain in the driving seat, armed with new tools that can aggregate and remix content in ways that often look like magic. But the platforms do not hold all the cards — at least when it comes to news and information. Not all content can be easily summarised.
“Trust matters, as does the experience of consuming news, including connection with others.”