Traditional media, in particular the BBC, still provide the most trusted sources of relatively uncontaminated information, in the sea of material that washes into the lives of young people. This is one conclusion from an international research study looking at the way in which news is accessed, verified and passed on by university students in the UK, Norway and Israel.
We found however that in the UK, levels of trust in news and journalism are particularly low. One student sums it up: “My generation, we have had this sort of exposure to the whole scandal about phone hacking and that sort of thing, and I think, we are quite distrustful of journalism at the moment.”
But this does not mean that UK students feel that they have found other, more reliable sources of information. They have even lower levels of confidence in non-mainstream sources – fewer than half even trust their own Facebook friends. So for many, the only faint light in the sea of uncertainty is the BBC; and even here there is no ringing endorsement: “The fact that it’s funded by everybody gives it a certain truth in a way because, there is no really ... there is no one certain set people that is trying to bring out their ideologies.”
