Netherlands residents among world top when it comes to trust in the news

In 2023, 57 percent of Netherlands residents had confidence in most of the news, and 65 percent trusted the news they use themselves. According to the annual Digital News Report (DNR), the Netherlands is one of the leaders of the 46 countries surveyed on trust in the news. The figures were published on Wednesday.

The DNR by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism shows the state of trust, interest in, and use of news. For the Netherlands’ results, Reuters collaborated with the media watchdog Commissariat for the Media (CvdM). This is “a special edition,” the CvdM said. “Because this is the first time we take stock after the coronavirus pandemic.”

“In 2023, we concluded that 2021 and 2022 turned out to be exceptional years, and various trends continued after the coronavirus,” the CvdM said. “Although the headlines sometimes suggest otherwise, the DNR shows that confidence in the news is still high in the Netherlands. Before the coronavirus, there was a slight decrease in confidence in news, but the trend has reversed during the corona years.”

The CvdM called the stability of confidence in the Netherlands “remarkable” because trust in the news has fallen in many other countries in recent years. In addition, the proportion of people in the Netherlands concerned about online disinformation is relatively low at 40 percent. The researchers asked to what extent people were concerned about what is real and fake on the internet. People were most doubtful about posts on the coronavirus, climate change, and the war in Ukraine.

The researchers also asked about confidence in specific news media and found it “unabatedly high. NOS, RTL Nieuws, the Volkskrant, NRC, Trouw, FD, AD, NU.nl, BNR, and SBS Hart van Nederland received an average of seven or higher from their users in 2023. De Telegraaf scored a 6.8. The slight decrease that was visible here in 2022 was also rectified in 2023.

However, the research showed that the trend of fewer people being interested in the news is continuing. In 2023, over half of Netherlands residents were still extremely or very interested in news, but that was less than before the coronavirus pandemic.

As in previous years, television dropped further as the most important news medium. Social media is popular among the younger generation as their primary news source. The position of print news again weakened. Compared to 2022, print as the primary source of news dropped from 10 to 8 percent.