The state of digital news

Television is holding strong as a source of news, online and social media are gaining ground, and print is in decline. These, among others, are the findings of the Oxford-based The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism's Digital News Report 2015. The report is based on a survey of around 20,000 people in 12 countries including the US, the UK and Germany, among others. It does not include India and China. The results hold insights into consumers' attitude to news and where it comes from. From the India perspective, three things stand out.

One, is the differences in the trust people have in media. Two-thirds trusted the media in Finland compared to only one-third in the US. The countries with the highest levels of trust had well-funded public service broadcasters. There is one more reason, then, for the information and broadcasting ministry to think hard about cutting its umbilical cord with Doordarshan, letting it be financially and creatively, and see it flower into a global broadcaster. Globally, the best news firms are the ones funded through a trust/not-for-profit model - Al Jazeera, BBC, and the Guardian, for instance.

Two, while Facebook and Twitter are big sources of news, what is more interesting is the context of consumption. People go seeking news on Twitter but on Facebook, they 'bump' into news. Their primary reason for being on it is to chat with friends. Yet, it is Facebook that is the top social network for news. The dominance of the Facebooks and Twitters on access to news audiences online is the big game-changer that everybody is talking about in India. It is already playing out in these 12 markets.

Three, is a trend that India is very much part of - even if it is not part of the survey - the rise in the consumption of online news videos. In Spain, the UK, Italy and Japan, it has grown from anywhere between five and 10 per cent. One part of it stems from the previous trends in the growth of social media as a source of news. Many now use videos that play by themselves in order to hook audiences. Funnily, the written word still retains its popularity at 40 per cent.