Australians’ confidence in the press and television has declined since respondents were first asked to rate each institution in 1981 and 1995, respectively. Confidence in the press has dropped from 29 per cent in 1981 to 17 per cent in 2018, while confidence in television has declined from 26 per cent in 1995 to 18 per cent in 2018.
In the 2018 Australian Values Study, one-quarter of Australians expressed ‘no confidence at all’ in the press and a further 58 per cent say they have ‘not very much’ confidence.
Confidence in the press has fallen since the World Values Survey was first run in Australia in 1981, with those not expressing confidence in the press has rising from 72 per cent in 1981 to 83 per cent in 2018.
Confidence in television is also low, with 82 per cent of respondents reporting they have ‘not very much’ or ‘no confidence at all’ in 2018.
The highest percentage of Australians expressing ‘a great deal of confidence’ in the press or television ever recorded was 4 per cent – recorded for television in 1995.
A range of questions in the Australian Values Study explore confidence in political and civic organisations. The first Study was fielded in 1981, providing an overview of long-term trends. Two of these questions investigate confidence in the media, namely the press and television. A majority of Australians have reported having low confidence in the press and television since the survey questions were first asked in 1981 and 1995, respectively.
The survey asks respondents to ‘please indicate how much confidence you have’ in a number of organisations. Confidence in the press has reached its lowest level on record in the 2018 survey, with 83 per cent of respondents reporting that they have ‘not very much confidence’ or ‘no confidence at all’. Only 16 per cent have ‘quite a lot of confidence’ in the press, and just 1 per cent ‘a great deal’ of confidence. While there has been some fluctuation in these percentages in the four surveys since 1981, confidence in the press has fallen overall: 29 per cent of Australians had ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’ of confidence in the press in 1981.
Australians also have little confidence in television; like confidence in the press, confidence in television has fallen since this question was first asked in 1995. 82 per cent of respondents in 2018 report having ‘not very much’ or ‘no confidence at all’ in television, up from 74 per cent in 1995.
While confidence in the press and television is falling, the long-term trends demonstrate that Australians did not have a great deal of confidence in these organisations to begin with (at least since the 1980s and 1990s, when surveys were first fielded). The decline in confidence has also been slow over the course of two or more decades, suggesting that future declines are also likely to be incremental.