Impartiality is a core commitment for parts of the news media, including both public service media such as the BBC and some private publishers such as Reuters News. But many other news media, legacy or new, operate with a much more explicit, opinionated, and sometimes openly partisan editorial line. This has long been the norm in, for example, many European newspapers and much of US cable television and talk radio.
In a context of often intense disagreement, where it sometimes feels like we have less and less in common, where social media are rife with polemics, and where some highly partisan news media and opinionated influencers and news creators have built significant audiences, it can look like the public is rejecting the aspiration towards impartiality and instead prefers news from sources that have a clearer point of view – perhaps especially a view that confirms people’s own opinions.
Is that true? One way to find out is to ask members of the public, and that is exactly what we have done in this year’s survey.
Do people want impartial news?
A defining aspect of impartiality is the attempt to abstain from being partial, in the context of news by aspiring to offer news without adopting a particular point of view – in contrast to outlets who have a clear an editorial line. Without suggesting that this exhausts a concept that can be both practically and philosophically elusive and subject to principled challenges, reporting the news while striving to keep from adopting a point of view is an important aspect both of how many journalists and editors think of the aspiration towards impartiality, and of more philosophical discussions of impartiality as a moral principle (Kieran 1998). Impartiality in this sense is not the absence of a clear moral position. It is instead a specific moral ideal. Previous research shows it is not only an abstract ideal, but also embedded in how much of the public in many countries think about impartiality when it comes to news (Mont’Alverne et al. 2023). The latter suggests it is clear and comprehensible enough to use in a survey. This is why we use it here as a gauge of how people think about impartiality in news.
Asked about the different kinds of news available, 45% of respondents across all markets say they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view. That is twice as many as the 22% who say they prefer news from sources that share their point of view, whereas 15% say they prefer news from sources that challenge their point of view, two different ways in which people might think about the appeal of more explicitly partial news sources
These responses are expressions of opinion, not observed behaviour, so of course some of the people who say they prefer news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view are in fact relying at least in part on clearly opinionated outlets, outlets that may or may not present themselves as such. (The Guardian is explicit, its stated ambition is to be ‘the world's leading liberal voice’, the strident Fox News less so, it used to market itself as ‘fair and balanced’.) But, in addition to being important in documenting widespread public appreciation for at least the idea of impartial news, these data are also aligned with a tendency in many countries we cover in this report for outlets that abstain from taking a clear and explicit editorial position on issues of the day and position themselves as relatively neutral – commercial broadcasters, online portals, public service media where these exist – to be among those with the highest reach both offline and online.
Because we have asked the same question before, we can track how much public opinion on this question has evolved over time. Looking exclusively at the 40 markets where we asked the question in both 2020 and 2026, there has been little change overall – most significantly perhaps there has been a slight decline in how many say they want news from sources that share their point of view (down by 4pp), and an increase in the number of respondents who say they don’t know (up by 5pp), both bigger shifts than the slight decline in the number of people who say they prefer to get news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view.1 In a context where many other aspects of media use, and people’s perception of news and its role in our societies, are changing rapidly, the numbers here are strikingly stable.
A relatively silent plurality and a much more vocal minority
The finding that a large plurality of the public in most countries still say they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view may be a surprise. It runs counter to expectations based on the experience many have of partisan polemics in the news and perhaps especially moralising grand-standing and rage-baiting on social media. But the outsize role played by the minority who seek partisanship is easier to understand when we take into account that those who say they prefer news from sources that share their point of view are, in our survey data, also more likely to:
Share and comment on news online and on social media
Be very or extremely interested in news and in politics
Place themselves on the left or the right of the political spectrum
Access news many times daily and pay for online news
The people who prefer news that aligns with their own views are a minority. But they tend to be more vocal, more highly engaged, more partisan, and more commercially important for many news publishers than the public at large.
Looking across social differences, young people and people with low levels of formal education are both groups that are less likely to say they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view. A slightly larger share of 18–24-year-old respondents say they prefer news from sources that share their point of view, or from sources that challenge their point of view. A significantly larger share of those with low levels of formal education answer ‘don’t know’. In both groups, however, a clear plurality still expresses a preference for impartiality.
Impartiality for me, impartiality for thee?
Importantly, when people express a personal preference for getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view, it is generally not simply a matter of individual taste – it is also a social norm that people subscribe to. Immediately after respondents were asked about their personal preference (‘Thinking about the different kinds of news available to you, do you prefer…’), we asked them about their more general views for the public at large (‘Thinking about the different kinds of news available, do you think other people in society should mainly…’). The aggregate public views here are strikingly aligned. Far from a case of ‘rules for thee, but not for me’, there is almost perfect correlation between how many say they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view and how many say other people in society should mainly do the same.2 (This is quite different from other issues, like perceived susceptibility to advertising or misinformation, where people often see themselves differently from the way they see the rest of the public.)
Global variation in preferences for impartial news, social media use, and polarisation
While pronounced, the preference for impartial news is not uniform across the world. In 24 of the markets we cover, half or more of the public say they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view, and in 16 markets, a plurality say so. But in seven of the remaining eight markets, including many important, populous countries in the Global South, a plurality say they prefer news from sources that share their point of view.
Survey data alone are far from enough to account for this variation, and the situation in individual countries and for specific communities will always also be shaped by cultural, historical, political, and other specific circumstances that go far beyond what we can cover here. But we can use our data to capture some potentially important country-to-country variations by mapping public preferences for getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view against two factors that previous research has documented are among those that sometimes significantly influence how people think about news – the platforms they access news via (Fletcher et al. 2025) and the political context that the news covers (Hanitzsch et al. 2018).
Platforms first: social media, which often amplifies polemics and offers highly personalised feeds, is potentially at odds with the aspiration of impartiality. And indeed, if we plot the percentage of respondents in each country who say that social media is their main source of news against the percentage who say they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view, we see a clear negative correlation at the country level. This does not prove a causal relationship (nor is the correlation as pronounced at the individual level), and in any case, disentangling whether behaviour or preferences comes first is a complicated task. But it is important to recognise that, all else being equal, in countries where more people say they rely on social media as their main source of news, there is a clear tendency for fewer people to say that they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view.
Polarisation next: profound disagreement or intractable conflict between different camps may potentially create a situation where the concept of impartiality begins to seem more ideological than idealistic. When core democratic institutions or the fundamental rights of whole swaths of the public are under concerted political attack, what does it mean to report the news in a way that doesn’t have a particular point of view? Our survey does not provide data on how politically polarised different societies are, but to consider this factor, we can draw on other research that does. Specifically, the V-Dem project (Nord et al. 2026) includes an expert estimate of the extent to which a society is divided into hostile political camps, and political differences undermine social relationships and discourage interaction across ideological lines. Using this as an indicator, we can plot countries by how polarised they are and how many people say they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view. What we see is some correlation, but it is important to underline that it is much weaker and there is greater variation. Again, this finding does not demonstrate a causal relationship. But, all else being equal, in more polarised societies, there seems to be slightly less of a preference for getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view.
Can impartial news survive?
Overall, our data suggest that the plurality of the public, and in many countries a clear majority, say they prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view, and also believe other people in society should mainly get news from such sources.
This underlines that, despite the proliferation of partisanship in both politics and media, online and offline, there is still real public demand for impartial news, and broad public support for the aspiration to provide it. It is something many want both for themselves and for others. Even in a world where algorithms sometimes reward polemics and societies are often deeply divided, there is clearly still public demand for news from sources that do not take a particular point of view.
That said, our analysis also underlines that impartial news faces real challenges. Because the minority who prefer getting news from sources that share their point of view are more engaged and commercially valuable than the public at large, news publishers – whether individual creators or media brands – in an incredibly competitive marketplace for attention, have an incentive to cater to them. Having a clearly articulated editorial line and partisan position can, in addition to the possible intrinsic appeal it may have for some creators or journalists, serve as a form of product differentiation. It is not the only way to try to stand out (clearly defined target audience, niche focus, format, etc. are others). But it is clearly one way to distinguish one’s offering from an abundance of alternatives. Especially in countries where many established news media have historically tried to position themselves as proponents of impartial news, new entrants are particularly likely to see partisanship as a powerful differentiator – as we have seen in the United States from cable news and talk radio onwards.
In terms of the media and political context news publishers need to navigate, the public preference for getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view tends to be less pronounced in countries where more people rely on social media as their main source of news and slightly less clear in countries that are more politically polarised. How pronounced either of these two factors is – the move to distributed discovery with a high reliance on social media and other digital platforms for news, and the move to a more polarised politics – differs in important ways from country to country. The growing importance of digital platforms in general is nearly universal, but the importance of social media and the like for news specifically varies greatly by country (Nielsen and Fletcher 2023). There is even more variation when it comes to political polarisation – while clearly and spectacularly on the rise in many countries, others have seen no significant change or even a slight decline in polarisation (Boxell et al. 2024). Looking at the 40 countries we covered in 2020 and again in 2026, the percentage of respondents who identify social media as their main source of news has grown significantly in 33 and declined in one over that period. Looking at the V-Dem data on polarisation, divisions have deepened in 29 countries, but declined in eight (Nord et al. 2026).
Many publishers, including both legacy titles and some new entrants, continue to have a strong connection with those in the public who prefer getting news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view. So far, public demand for impartial news has remained strong even as platforms become ever more important and polarisation has increased in many societies. But for those who are struggling, or struggling to break in, a more strident, partisan editorial line is one potential way to seek to stand out in the din (while perhaps adding to it). And in the countries where people increasingly rely on social media for news, and where politics is growing more polarised, these incentives are likely to be reinforced, rewarding the production of partisan news that an important and highly engaged minority may want, but that many others believe isn’t right for them personally, or for society at large.
Footnotes
1 We asked the same question in a small number of countries in 2013, but with different response options, so the data from then is not comparable to the 2020 and 2026 data.
2 There may be an element of consistency bias here, where respondents align answers across different questions so as to not come across as hypocritical or inconsistent, but the overall pattern is very clear.