Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand 2026
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Treadwell, Greg
Myllylahti, Merja
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Commissioned Report
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JMAD
Description
This is the seventh report about trust in news in Aotearoa New Zealand produced by the AUT Journalism, Media and Democracy research centre (JMAD). The trust survey that informs the report was completed in collaboration with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. With permission from the Institute’s researchers, we used the same survey questions to investigate trust in news, news interest and avoidance, and a comparable sampling method to the one used in their annual Reuters Digital News Reports to measure news trust. This allows us international comparisons with Aotearoa New Zealand about levels of trust in the news. In 2025, the Reuters survey covered 48 countries. Similarly to the Reuters survey, in 2026 we asked New Zealanders about their trust in news, news consumption, news interests, news sources, news avoidance and paying for news. We added new questions to gain a better understanding of New Zealanders’ news consumption, and where they pay attention to news. We also scoped what role artificial intelligence (AI) and search assistants have in news trust and consumption; and to what extent AI searches and assistants are used as sources of news or information verification. We also added a question about the impact of news media managers or owners/boards on New Zealanders’ news trust and consumption patterns. The 2026 survey had 19 main questions and some sub-questions. In our 2026 report, we added The Press, Waikato Times and The Post to the survey because they are the main newspapers of Stuff Masthead Publishing. As in 2020-2025, survey data for our 2026 report was collected by New Zealand online market research company Horizon Research Ltd.
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AUT Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy. https://www.jmadresearch.com/trust-in-news-in-new-zealand
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This report is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International. When reproducing any part of this report—including tables and graphs—full attribution must be given to the report authors. CC-BY.