Our podcast: Digital News Report 2026. Episode 7: The social impact of public service news

In this episode we explore attitudes around the social impact of news from public service media. We’ll look at how these perceptions vary across the world, how this correlates with other attitudes and engagement patterns towards news, and what people say are the positive or negative aspects of public service news in their countries.

The podcast

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Speakers

Jim Egan is the lead author of the Digital News Report 2026 and is a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute.

Host Mitali Mukherjee is the Director of the Reuters Institute and is a political economy journalist with more than two decades of experience in TV, print and digital journalism.

The transcript

Defining public service news | Measuring social impact | Trust and national variation | Politics and polarisation | Audience value and takeaways

Defining public service news ↑

Mitali: So we'll do a framing question before we do a scene setting question, which is what was the core question that we were trying to answer or get an answer from audiences with regard to public service broadcasters and the social impact.

Jim: Yeah. Thanks. So we asked this question in 26 markets out of the 48, which we include within the scope of the digital news report. And we chose the markets essentially on the basis of them having well-established and highly recognised public service broadcasters or public service media organisations in their countries. Most of the markets were in Europe. We did also ask the question in Canada and the United States, and also in three Asia Pacific markets. And the question that we asked, and it's probably worth me just reading it out so that everyone's completely clear about the inquiry here is we asked quite a simple question. We said, overall, do you think that news provided by public service broadcasters has a positive or negative effect on life in your country?

Mitali: That's a good setup. Then, Jim, when we talk about public service media, what are the hallmarks of, you know, what constitutes PSBs and PSMs and what sort of examples should people think of when we're having this conversation?

Jim: Yeah, we left the question deliberately open. So we didn't specifically prompt people about particular public service broadcasters in their country. So we invited people to think about, whatever public service broadcasters came to mind. That's relevant in a number of markets where there's not just one PSB, but there's a sort of a public service ecosystem. So to speak, just in case people weren't quite clear what we meant by the term public service broadcasting. It is a bit of an industry phrase, so we provided an example of a public service broadcaster in each country. And that's the way we approach the question. And just to stress that we weren't asking people to rate public service broadcasters as organisations, we weren't asking them to provide a view on the output of these public service media. We were asking them to think about the wider social impact of public service news in the countries where people live. The reason why we did this is that as we see elsewhere in the digital news report, the role of media and consumption of media is changing very quickly in many countries. We're in a more polarised and sort of tense environment in terms of the relationship between politics, media and everyday life. So we wanted to get a sense in this period of change, what people think about the social impact of news from those public service entities.

Mitali: I think in some ways you've answered what my following question was going to be, which is why now? And you've sort of outlined the timeliness of this question. So let me move to the central findings, Jim, which is kind of going back to the original line of inquiry. overall, what do people think about public service news in their countries and whether it has a positive effect on their countries? And do you see any great variation in that?

Measuring social impact ↑

Jim: Okay. We gave people a range of possible answers to the question. Basically people could answer from very negative to very positive in terms of the impact from a social-impact point of view of news from public service media. Overall, if I look across the 2026 markets, 37 percent of people said they were either very positive or somewhat positive about the social impact of public service media, 22 percent said they were negative, and 35 percent said they neither had a positive nor a negative view. And I think that 35 percent is worth bearing in mind. So it may be that people don't think about this very much. It may be that people were genuinely sort of indifferent about the social impact of public service news. But if we take the 37 percent positive and the 22 percent negative across the 26 markets, that's a plus 15 percentage-point difference in terms of people's overall view about the positive role that public service news has on life in their respective countries.

Trust and national variation ↑

Mitali: Can we unpack these differences between countries a little bit more? Jim, for example, on a parameter of trust. What sort of differences did you find and what could explain those differences between countries?

Jim: Yeah. So on the question of national variation within the 26 markets there was quite a wide range, in fact, so if I go from the top to the bottom, so in Norway, this, this was the market where we saw the greatest positive difference between people who had a favourable view and those who had a negative view of public service media. So again, if you deduct, the negative percentage from the positive percentage, there was a plus 48 percentage point score in Norway, the most negative was, in Serbia, which is down at minus 23 percentage points. That means people had a negative view outweighed those with a positive view by by twenty three points. but there were 18 of the 26 markets that had an overall positive view. There were three markets where the view was mixed between positive and negative, and five where the view was negative overall on a net basis.

You asked about the role of trust. And this emerges as quite a good explanatory factor for that range of national variations overall. So we see quite a close relationship between overall trust in news and the extent to which people are positive about the social impact of public service news. There's a close association there. Statistically, we refer to this as as the r squared. So for people who are into this kind of stuff, the r squared was zero point seven two for this relationship between positivity in terms of social impact towards public service news and trust in news overall. And you also see that at a more individual level. So people who say that they trust news. Within that group, 44 percent of people within the group who genuinely trust news are positive about the social impact of news, and only 21 percent are negative. So trust definitely helps explain part of the story about these national variations in views about the social impact of news.

Mitali: There is also a quite important relationship between engagement with these public service broadcasters and how people then perceive their impact is on and within specific countries. Isn't it?

Jim: Yeah. I think it's trust and engagement. Or perhaps to put it in a more straightforward way, usage also makes a difference. So generally speaking, if someone trusts news overall in their country and they tend to use and consume news from their public service media, then they're much more likely to be positive about the social impact of that public service news. So to give you a couple of national examples, in Japan, if you use, news from NHK, for example, 52 percent of people are positive about public service news if they're part of the NHK audience, whereas only 22 percent are negative. In Norway, 66 percent of people who consume public service media are positive, where again, almost half of the people who don't consume public service media are negative.

So trust and engagement are really two of the big factors that seem to help explain these national variations. The third thing, which is more sort of anecdotal that we observe, is that particularly among the group, of countries, which was negative about the social impact of public service media over the past twelve, eighteen months to two years. Generally speaking, you can often see a story or there's a tale to be told about funding reductions, organisational upheaval, political confrontations that these public service media have got into. So we can only speculate there. But it seems that in those markets where there's a more negative view that something about what's been happening to the public service media organisations probably also plays a role.

Politics and polarisation ↑

Mitali: One of the chapters we have in this year's Digital News Report is around impartiality, and it's a real tension for PSBs that often uphold impartiality as one of their key pillars, but also become embroiled in polarised political debates. What can we understand from this survey in terms of how big or small a role polarisation is playing in specific countries, in terms of people, and how they then think about the impact of public service news.

Jim: Yeah, I think this is a really big factor, especially in a number of markets that I'll talk about briefly, that we see if we leave aside sort of national variation. So differences between countries, you can also see differences within countries, and those intra-country differences often come down to a large extent to people's political viewpoints. So, when you cut the data in different markets between those who self-identify as being on the left or the right or in the center of the political spectrum, you can see some quite stark differences. And those differences appear irrespective of whether the overall national view is positive or in fact, whether it's negative. So if we take Australia, for example, which has a positive view, a strongly positive view overall of plus 28 percentage points about the social impact of public service news people on the left, 65 percent of people on a net basis say that they are positive about public service news, whereas those on the right, only three percent of people who self-identify as being on the right of Australian politics are positive about the social impact. Overall, a positive view in Australia, but really quite stark perspectives according to people's political affiliation.

If you take another market which is more negative overall and the UK is one example, the UK is in a mixed group where there's an even balance between people who are positive and negative. Eighteen percent of people on a net basis, on the left of British politics, are positive about the social impact of public service news. There's a big swing. So over on the right, there's a net 36 percent negative view from people on the right of the political spectrum in the UK about the social impact of public service news. So this seems to be a really important factor, not in every market, but in the vast majority of the 26 where we asked this question, it did seem to make a difference. Generally speaking, people on the left tend to be more positive about the social impact of public service news. People on the right less so, although it's not true everywhere. So for example, in Italy, we found that people on the left are much more negative than people on the right.

Audience value and takeaways ↑

Mitali: In general terms. Again, public service broadcasters have a slightly different remit from other forms of private news organisations, Jim. And it's, you know, it's not simplistic, but is it clear for people who do see the positive effects of it, what those positive effects are?

Jim: Yeah. We asked a follow-up question of people who either said that they were positive or negative. Essentially we gave people half a dozen sort of attributes of public service news. And we asked those who are positive, what they liked and what they appreciated. And conversely, for people who are negative. There were two things within the group of people who are positive about the social impact of public service news. The two things which a majority of those people said that they appreciated and thought was important were. And I'll just read them out again. Number one, public service media ensures everyone has access to important national and regional news. So more than 60 percent of people across the survey agreed with that. And the second one was public service media provides trustworthy news, and that's important from a social impact point of view. Those two things emerged as strong factors among people who were positive.

Among those who were negative, when we asked them what they thought was problematic in terms of social impact, there was a broadly even spread of issues, but one emerged really strongly.  And that was the perception that public service news is influenced by political and other interests. And 71 percent of people who are negative said that they thought this was an issue. And this goes to another topic that we cover elsewhere in the report, that sense of influence or undue influence is something that people are very sensitive about whether they are actually positive or negative. The perception that news, particularly from public service media, which, as you say, has a special and a very particular mandate around inclusivity and independence and so on and so forth. If people think that there's political influence in that public service media, it really significantly appears to affect their perception of it.

Mitali: Two contradictions seem to exist at the same time for public service broadcasters, especially, Jim: one that journalism should be seen as a public good and the other that for these PSBs, it's hard to sort of consider themselves as separate from a country's prevailing political context. What can public service broadcasters take away from some of our findings in terms of how to connect back better to the audience that they serve?

Jim: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think going back to the point around trust and in particular usage, if the social role of public service media is something which is important and it surely is both for governments and policymakers and these public service organisations themselves, getting people who currently have a more negative view to use public service media more often and relate to it is probably the key to changing their attitudes about its national role.

Now, clearly that's not straightforward. I think that there are in some markets, at least, there are segments of the population who just simply don't like public service media. You know, almost as a point of principle or a point of an expression of political identity. But for people who are more open-minded and so on, working to make news from public service media seem accessible, appear relevant, helping to explain what's going on in the world and making sense of that in the context of their everyday lives to encourage this usage and this deepening of engagement. That seems like something that's going to make a big difference.

The other thing going back to what we were just discussing, which isn't something for public service media, but for people who are involved in public service media policy is really demonstrating the clear separation of politicians and political influence from public service media seems to be the number one thing that people on the policy side could do to ease these fears and these concerns about sort of undue influence on the part of political actors in what's happening in terms of public service news output.

Mitali: Jim, thanks very much for joining our podcast and this conversation today.

Jim: Thanks, Mitali.