There will be a lot of work to do to restore public confidence in the news media.
A research report produced by professors Marc-François Bernier, of the University of Ottawa, and Marie-Eve Carignan, of the Université de Sherbrooke, reports a significant decline in citizens’ trust in the media in information, their credibility and that of their journalists, when compared to the results of a similar survey conducted in 2013.
The public is not lacking in contradictions. Thus, three-quarters (76%) of respondents say they find the information they trust the most in the traditional media, all platforms combined. However, only half of them (50.5% to 51%) believe that things happened “about” as reported on TV, radio and newspapers. Worse still, only 11% to 15% of respondents, depending on the outlet, believe things “really happened” as reported by these three outlets. These are combined falls totaling between 17 and 18 percentage points from 2013.
The others think that there is “a lot of difference” with reality or that “it didn’t happen at all” as they say, percentages up, but not as much as the proportion of those who do not do not know or do not consult the news. These results are even lower for the Internet.
fake news makers
Curiously, while three-quarters of the population get their news from the traditional media, almost half (45%) believe that “sometimes or often journalists help create and spread fake news”, the lack of credibility being the greatest among respondents who identify with the Conservative Party of Quebec. The proportion is almost identical (47%) among those who believe that this is rarely or never the case.
Although a majority of respondents who are familiar with a subject covered by the media believe that journalists are accurate, this majority is very slim, at 54%.
The division of the population is almost perfect when it comes to evaluating the independence of journalists from political parties and political power. A third don’t believe it, a third believe it and a third don’t know it. In the same vein, more than 40% believe that public funding of the media “encourages journalists to be less critical of governments”, while 38% believe that “it has no influence on the work of journalists”. Here too the division is almost perfect if we disregard those who do not decide. It should be noted that in both cases there are significant drops compared to 2013 when 54% considered them independent of politics. The question of financial aid did not apply at that time.
Working for who ?
Only one-third of respondents believe that journalists primarily serve the public interest, another third believe that they primarily serve the interest of their company or their own interest and the other third believe that they serve these three interests. It should be noted that Quebecor is singled out by the public in this regard, with 43% of respondents believing that it is the company that uses its journalists the most to “serve the political or economic interests of its leaders”. Radio-Canada comes a distant second in this assessment, with 15%, with all other media companies garnering insignificant percentages in this regard.
However, Quebecor does not rank badly at all in terms of comparative credibility. Although Radio-Canada’s media take the prize with 37% of respondents giving it the highest quality of information, those of Quebecor remain in second position with the favor of 20% of respondents, followed by The Press (10.7%) and Duty (4.8%), a hierarchy that has remained unchanged for more than ten years.
On an individual basis, more than 70% of respondents believe that journalists are “often or sometimes” influenced by their political preferences in the way they report the news. Yet when asked a similar question about the news media as a whole, 44% of respondents believe it is well balanced, while one in seven (15%) find it too left wing and one in eight (11.8%) too far right. Nearly a third did not speak.
An unsatisfactory watchdog
As for the discipline respected or to be imposed on the media, the dissatisfaction of the general public is palpable on the occasion of the 50e anniversary of the Quebec Press Council (CPQ), the unloved and abused court of honor of the profession.
Only one respondent in four (26%) believes that the CPQ, whose power is limited to moral sanction, is the appropriate mechanism to ensure that journalists respect the ethics and professional conduct related to their profession. Nevertheless, half of people believe that the media “gives importance to complaints and reproaches from the public”, compared to 27% who believe the opposite. On the other hand, 41% believe that the media tries to hide their errors, against less than 36% who think on the contrary that they agree to admit them.
The report is based on an online consultation by the firm Léger conducted last April with 1,538 respondents, an opinion survey with a non-probability sample that does not allow a margin of error to be established. It was presented on the occasion of the first edition of the Carleton-sur-Mer International Journalism Festival, in Gaspésie, and for the 50th anniversary of the Quebec Press Council.