More than any other country, Irish people trust radio as their main source of news, a new report finds.
In the age of fake news, local radio news appears to be bucking trends by becoming more trustworthy.
The report, published today by Reuters, BAI and DCU, asserts that:
“Ireland’s radio news consumption in the past week figure (45 percent) is higher than the UK (34 percent) and the EU average (36 percent).
Some 13 percent of Irish consumers use radio as their main source of news compared to just 5 percent in the US and 8 percent in the UK.”
“Irish consumers’ choice of radio as their main source of news is the highest of all 37 countries surveyed, with 13% of Irish respondents citing radio as their main source of news, compared with an EU average of 7%.”
Irish Trust in Local Radio News Growing
Diving deeper into the report’s findings, we can see that use of local radio as a news source is more trusted, year-on-year, despite a general downward trend across other news sources.
As a ‘Main Source of News’, local radio has seen a 1% growth since last year, at 13%. As any source of news, local radio has grown 3%, to 22%.
What does this mean?
Irish people trust local over national or international sources; we trust human voices over on-screen algorithms.
Why does this matter? Well, our nationwide radio network operate local newsrooms staffed by trained local journalists. We see that trust in local news in action every day; the most popular sections on several of our radio station websites is News.
Besides news bulletins, daily current affairs shows fronted by expert, trusted, locally-based personalities form the core of our network offering.
- The award winning Patricia Messinger presents Cork Today on C103 in Cork.
- 96FM‘s Opinion Line hosted by PJ Coogan
- Limerick Today on Limerick’s Live95FM with Joe Nash
