Although the digital market offers numerous positive opportunities, the German results of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023 point to a decline in interest in daily news. According to the report, only 52% of adult internet users are still interested in news. In the previous year, this figure was 57%. Another striking element is so-called news avoidance. One in 10 adults in Germany often actively tries to avoid the news. 65% try to do so at least occasionally. The reason for this is that regular reports on wars, crises and violence apparently provoke deliberate rejection. Accordingly, more than half (58%) of those surveyed in the Reuters study stated that they were very interested in positive news. There is also a high level of interest in news that proposes solutions (53%) and news that helps readers understand complex issues (50%).
Overall, it is evident that trust in the established media is continuing to decline. A study by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation entitled “Which news can you still trust?” shows that people believe they are increasingly unable to rely on the information provided by public broadcasters. In the period from October 2019 to January 2020, 78% were still of the opinion that the news from public broadcasters was generally credible. In the autumn of 2020, this proportion fell to 74%, and at the turn of the year 2022/23 it was only 70%. A survey conducted by Infratest dimap on behalf of WDR, which was published in December 2023, came to similar conclusions. Trust in public broadcasting has fallen by 17 percentage points since 2020 (to 53%) and in daily newspapers by 12 percentage points (to 46%). In its latest publication from May 2023, the Mainz-based long-term study on media trust looks at the topic from a slightly different angle. The authors show that although Germans’ trust in the media is currently lower than during the coronavirus pandemic, it is still above the pre-pandemic level. In 2022, 49% said that they could “on the whole” or “completely” trust the media. In 2019, the figure was 43%.
In addition to the loss of trust in journalism among parts of the population, the focus is also on physical attacks on media professionals and attacks in the digital space. Reporters Without Borders reports that 45 media professionals lost their lives in connection with their work in 2023. Despite the war in Ukraine and Gaza, this means that fewer journalists were killed than in the previous year, namely 16 fewer, the lowest number since 2002 (33). In addition, Reporters Without Borders puts the number of imprisoned media professionals worldwide at 521 as of December 1, 2023, a decrease of 8.4% compared to the previous year. 264 journalists are imprisoned in China (including Hong Kong), Myanmar, Belarus and Vietnam alone.
Attacks on media professionals are now more or less part of everyday life in Germany. The attacks range from insults and intimidation to physical assaults during reporting, particularly at protests and demonstrations. Reporters Without Borders reported 103 physical attacks on journalists in 2022, the highest number since records began in 2015 (no figures were available for 2023 at the time of writing). Overall, Germany has therefore deteriorated further in the press freedom rankings, slipping to 21st place.