South Africa
Survey sample primarily composed of English speakers
The media environment has seen growth in the influence of news creators, a welcome injection of funding into community media, and increasing adoption of AI solutions into newsrooms. Some legacy media titles have closed, but the rise of digital news creators and their audiences indicates a more positive outlook for the business of news. Trust in news overall has been eroding, not least because of incursions into the media ecosystem by foreign states.
South African newsrooms keep shrinking. The sector is still dealing with the consequences of earlier print retrenchments and closures, especially the Media24 print shutdowns that began in 2024, and this year the Mail & Guardian said they were cutting 12 people from their already small newsroom of 25 permanent staff.
Tracking with global trends, digital news creators are growing increasingly influential, making the online news environment more crowded and competitive, and accelerating the shift of audiences away from legacy outlets and towards smaller digital, personality‑driven platforms. Founded in 2025, the Debrief Network, for example, is anchored by ex-News24 editor Qaanitah Hunter, and its goal is to become ‘a habit for people who currently live outside the news cycle’.1 Other news creators are less invested in the craft of ethical journalism, with a rash of conservative commentators mimicking the techniques of the US’s right-wing creator economy.
The final report of the Competition Commission’s 2025 Media and Digital Platforms Market Inquiry report was released, confirming that Google will establish a R688m (US $40m) media support package, described by Google as 'tailored for the country’s unique and multilingual news ecosystem'. The report also imposed new transparency and AdTech obligations on Google, and content‑control tools across Meta, TikTok, Microsoft, YouTube, and AI firms, described as a shift in regulatory thinking that is not just about repairing the media industry’s losses, but ‘reshaping the digital ecosystem for fairer, more sustainable competition in the future’.2 There has been an initial injection of R10.7m (US $640,000) into 23 digital news media projects, thanks to the Association of Independent Publishers/Google Digital News Transformation Fund, although it is too early to gauge the overall impact. It remains to be seen if this merely allows news organisations a brief respite from the attrition of declining revenue, or serves as a kickstart for new business models.
The broader industry has acknowledged that advertising alone will not sustain journalism, given the domination of global platforms, and publishers are experimenting with a variety of revenue models. Media24 launched enterprise subscriptions for News24, Netwerk24, and Landbou.com, aimed at enlisting institutions as customers.
This year has seen an increase in investigative analysis into foreign information manipulation and interference. Forbidden Stories reported on payments to an intermediary to broker payments to ‘online newspapers’ and influencers to publish pro-Russian content.3 OpenAI reported on a ChatGPT user who generated at least 38 pro-Kremlin articles, the majority of which were published on South African news sites under the byline of a fictitious writer. The vulnerability of media ethics was highlighted when an SABC journalist was placed on precautionary suspension following allegations of accepting payment of R500 (just US $30) in exchange for a source’s contact details.
Wits University’s 2025 State of the Newsroom report suggests that South Africa is ‘among the leaders in experimenting with AI in journalism in Africa’ (McNally et al. 2025). This ranges from the largest site, News24, which has appointed a head of AI strategy and rolled out an AI newsroom assistant, to community newspapers like The Pondoland Times, which has implemented AI strategies to drive its digital ad revenue and editorial production. However, a Stellenbosch University report found that most journalists use AI cautiously, often checking the results manually, eroding AI’s efficiency benefits (Allen et al. 2026).
There is cause for optimism. Many legacy media organisations are taking the opportunity to re-engineer news products for the next generation of news consumers, and news creators are proliferating. In both cases, the challenge is to build sustainable business models that match the scope of the products, while maintaining ethical standards.
Chris Roper
Deputy CEO, Code for Africa
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.
Methodology note
These data are based on a survey of English-speaking, online news users in South Africa – an important part of a larger, more diverse, media market. Respondents are generally more affluent, younger, have higher levels of formal education, and are more likely to live in cities than the wider South African population. Findings should not be taken to be nationally representative.
Share news via social, messaging or email
51%
(+7)
Avoid the news sometimes/often
42%
(+1)
Trust in news overall
50%
(-5)
Global average: 37%
From a 2022 high of 61%, trust in news has declined to 50%. South Africa now ranks ninth of the 48 markets: in 2022, it was second. Reversing this decline is going to require a collaborative effort by trusted legacy brands and new digital creators, to establish editorial guardrails and agreement on industry self-regulation.
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
21/180
Score 77.95
Measure of press freedom from NGO Reporters Without Borders based on expert assessment. More at rsf.org
