Austria
Major ownership shifts and important cost-cutting measures reshaped Austria’s media landscape in the last year, while the public media company ORF, still by far the most-used and most-trusted news brand, underwent governance reform and appointed new leadership.
Three major deals transformed Austria’s media ownership. Kronen Zeitung changed hands at the shareholder level when Germany’s FUNKE Mediengruppe (formerly WAZ) sold its 50% stake to the Dichand family, returning the newspaper to full ownership by the family. In digital commerce, Willhaben, Austria’s dominant online classifieds platform, became a joint venture between investor Sprints and Styria, owner of Die Presse and Kleine Zeitung. Media For Europe (MFE), controlled by the Berlusconi family, raised its stake in German-based ProSiebenSat.1 to over 75%, gaining majority control of a group that owns Austria’s largest private free-to-air TV channels, including ATV, Puls 4, and Puls 24. Our survey suggests the public is keenly aware of such concentration: media owners and parent companies are seen as the most influential force on news coverage, rated influential by 75% of respondents and very influential by 46%.
These shifts came amid severe financial strain within the sector. Federal government advertising spending – an important revenue source for the press – collapsed from €18.6m in the first half of 2024 to just €3.2m in the same period of 2025, leading to attacks on Media Minister Babler from tabloid media, even as the EU criticised limited progress in ensuring fair distribution of state advertising. Between August and October 2025, a cost-cutting wave swept through newsrooms, affecting roughly 180 to 200 jobs. Kleine Zeitung’s savings package affected 34 positions, Der Standard cut up to 25 employees, and Kurier announced around 50 job closures. Die Presse, Regionalmedien Austria, ProSiebenSat.1, Puls 4/Puks 24, and Antenne Steiermark also made cuts. The wave continued into 2026. In February ProSiebenSat.1 Puls 4 announced cuts of up to 45 further positions.1
Against this difficult backdrop, some publishers invested in digital innovation. In June 2025, Die Presse expanded its offering by including full access to the New York Times for its digital subscribers at no additional cost. Russmedia, publisher of VOL.AT, launched V+ Premium, a higher-tier dual-account subscription that provides access to three regional papers, allows article gifting, and bundles access across its portals with the aim of increasing revenue per user by encouraging sharing within households. Russmedia also created Story Premium, a native-advertising format with click-through rates up to 14 times higher than traditional formats. Both innovations won first prizes for regional media at the 2025 WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards Europe. Our data suggest these publishers are building on receptive audiences: among Russmedia’s print readers, about half also pay for online news, compared to 31% for Die Presse, 27% for Der Standard, and just 12% for Kronen Zeitung, against a national average of 16%. In podcasting, Der Standard’s daily Thema des Tages was named top podcast in Austria by both Spotify and Apple in 2025. The podcast is free and ad-supported, with an optional ad-free premium tier; 64% of podcast news users in last year’s survey agreed that podcasts help them understand issues more deeply than other media. Also, just over a quarter of respondents (28%) say they have consumed news from an individual creator or influencer in the past week – 17% from creators who mainly focus on news, and 16% from creators who primarily post about other topics but occasionally cover the news.
The public broadcaster ORF retains a combined weekly reach of 70%. In 2025, parliament rebalanced ORF governance: changes included a reduction in the federal government’s seats from nine to six in the 35-member Foundation Council (Stiftungsrat), which appoints the Director General and sets the strategic direction, while the Public Council (Publikumsrat), representing viewers and listeners interests, increased its seats from six to nine, responding to the Constitutional Court’s concerns about excessive political influence.2 Under the reformed structure, the Stiftungsrat appointed Radio Director Ingrid Thurnher as Director General in March 2026, after incumbent Roland Weißmann resigned unexpectedly. New DNR survey questions reveal a nuanced view of the broadcaster. Asked whether ORF news has a positive or negative effect on life in Austria, 38% say positive and 24% negative, with 35% neutral. Those who value ORF most appreciate its role in ensuring access to important news (62%) and supporting democracy (53%). The broader perception of political influence on news media persists: 73% see government officials and politicians as influential on news coverage, with 38% seeing them as very influential.
Sergio Sparviero and Josef Trappel, with additional research by Stefan Gadringer and Mariia Aleksevych
University of Salzburg
In the online survey we ask respondents which news brands they have used to access news in the last week. These figures are based on respondents’ recall of the news sources they have used, and should be understood as survey-based measures of weekly brand reach for news.
They are not the same as web analytics, audience ratings, or other audience measurement systems (such as BARB for television in the UK). Those approaches use different methods and may measure different things. Our figures are based on what respondents tell us in an online survey about which brands they have used for news in the past week.
It is also important to note that we ask specifically about use for news. Some multi-genre broadcasters, newspapers, or other providers offer content beyond news, and the figures in our report should not be interpreted as measuring the overall audience reach for these media organisations. They refer only to respondents who say they used that brand to access news.
How do you ask about offline and online news reach?
We ask about offline and online reach separately. First, we ask respondents which brands they have used to access news offline in the last week, via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. Then we ask which brands they have used to access news online in the last week, via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of internet access.
The questions as asked in the survey are:
Which of the following brands have you used to access news offline in the last week (via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media)? Please select all that apply.
Which of the following brands have you used to access news online in the last week (via websites, apps, social media, and other forms of Internet access)? Please select all that apply.
Respondents can select more than one brand in each question. For that reason, the figures do not add up to 100%. They show the proportion of respondents who say they used each brand for news in the last week.
How do you present the weekly news reach data in the report?
On each country or market page, we present the most widely used brands in two charts: one for offline news reach and one for online news reach. The offline chart covers use via TV, radio, print, and other traditional media. The online chart covers use via websites, apps, social media, and other internet-based forms of access.
The figures shown are weekly news reach: the percentage of respondents who say they used that brand for news at least once in the last week.
These figures are useful for comparing the relative news reach of different brands within each market, and for understanding how news use is distributed across offline and online sources. However, they should not be treated as market shares or measures of total time spent with a brand.
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
The brand selection is a strategic sample and not a comprehensive list of all news providers in each market. We consult with country or market experts, review prior years’ Digital News Report data, and draw on other data sources to identify the most widely used brands for news across traditional and online channels.
In some cases, where a news provider operates a number of related news brands, we aggregate these under a single heading. For example, in the UK, reach for the BBC may include use of several BBC news services across different platforms. This is done to give a clearer sense of the overall reach of major news providers, but it means that figures may not always refer to a single programme, website, app, newspaper, or channel.
Because of survey length limitations, we can only ask about a limited number of brands in each market. The charts should not be treated as exhaustive lists of every brand used for news in that market. Due to space limitations, reach charts show up to 16 of the most used brands, though we ask about more in each survey.
How should the offline and online figures be interpreted?
A respondent may use the same brand both offline and online, and may also use several different brands in the same week. For this reason, the offline and online figures should not be added together to calculate a total audience. They are best read as separate indicators of how far particular brands reach people through different forms of access.
As with other survey-based findings, small differences should be interpreted with caution. We are careful not to claim that one brand reaches more people than another, or that a brand’s reach has changed, unless the differences are large enough to be meaningful. Any year on year change of 2 percentage points or lower is not considered statistically significant.
Changing media
Over the past decade, audiences have shifted from traditional to online news sources, with social media and video networks jumping 5pp this year, in line with global trends.
Pay for online news
16%
(-6)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
41%
(+2)
Trust in news overall
39%
(-2)
Global average: 37%
Overall trust in news remains essentially stable at 39%, broadly in line with last year’s 41% and consistent with the post-COVID plateau observed since 2022. ORF News remains among the most trusted brands, with its trust score rising slightly to 66% (from 63%), followed by Der Standard at 62% (from 60%) and Die Presse at 62% (from 59%).
We ask each respondent to rate a number of popular brands (usually 15 in each country) according to how trustworthy they think each brand’s news output is. We do this on a 0-10 scale, where a score of 0 means that the respondent does not see the brand as trustworthy at all and 10 means that they see the brand as completely trustworthy – with 5 meaning ‘neither trustworthy or untrustworthy’. There is an option for those who have not heard of any particular brand to ensure that scores are based only on responses from people who are familiar with each brand.
When we come to report these scores, we add up the proportion of respondents that give a score between 6-10 and mark this as ‘trust’. We also add up the proportion that give a brand a score between 0-4 and mark this as ‘don’t trust’.
The question as asked in the survey is…
How trustworthy would you say news from the following brands is? Please use the scale below, where 0 is ‘not at all trustworthy’ and 10 is ‘completely trustworthy’.
As we make explicit throughout the report, including next to tables presenting brand-level trust findings, whether respondents consider a brand trustworthy or not is their subjective judgement. The percentage figures shown are aggregates of people’s personal opinions, they are not an objective assessment of underlying trustworthiness. We leave it to each respondent to form an opinion on whether they trust someone or something, and we field the question because we consider the resulting data to be important.
How do you present the trust data in the report?
We present the data in an alphabetised table. In the past, we presented this data as a stacked bar chart, but this led some to treat the chart as a list of the most and least trusted news brands in a given market, despite our explicit explanation this was not what the tables showed.
We present the data in a way that avoids giving small differences the appearance of great importance. In cases where there is around two percentage points difference or less between the brands, we cannot say for sure that one brand is more trusted than another. We are careful not to try to claim that one brand is more trusted than another or that trust scores have changed unless those changes are statistically significant.
Due to survey length limitations, it is important to note that we only ask about 15 of the most widely used brands. It is very likely that there are brands with lower (and higher) trust scores that we do not ask about. For that reason, we cannot say that any brand is the least (or most) trusted overall. Next to each chart we are careful to say: “Only the below brands were included in the survey. It should not be treated as a list of the most or least trusted brands as it is not exhaustive.”
How do you choose which brands to ask about?
We consult with country or market experts, draw on prior years’ Digital News Report data and other data sources to determine the most widely used brands (across traditional and online channels) when it comes to news. We also try to include ‘local newspapers’ or ‘local television’ as catch-all titles as we recognise their impact is considerable in most markets.
How representative is this 48-market survey?
The Digital News Report survey is based on an online poll but the methodology selects participants to be as representative of national populations as possible. Samples are assembled using representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market and data is weighted to targets based on census/industry accepted data. The full methodology can be found here.
How do you try to contextualise the findings to ensure that trust scores are not taken out of context or misinterpreted?
Trust is one of a number of measures we track, including consumption of different sources, device usage, social media use, and much more. We aim to maintain consistency in our measurements year-on-year so that ratings of trust, levels of news consumption, and more, can be contextualised.
Country data is accompanied by an 800-word commentary from a media expert that aims to set the data in a wider context. We write a short commentary on the trust scores where appropriate, noting any statistically relevant changes.
RSF World Press Freedom Index
19/180
Score 79.43
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
