Levels of trust in broadcast news currently stand at around 90% in the UK, according to Dorothy Byrne, head of news and current affairs at Channel 4.
Speaking at a conference on fake news organised by the Westminster Media Forum, she said that this is thanks to public service broadcasting being regulated, duly impartial and held to account when it gets things wrong. Indeed, the regulation of broadcasting is the key to why people trust it in the UK “and we must be careful we don’t lose that”.
Byrne said that Channel 4 had made the decision to go onto the internet and last year had 2 billion views of its stories. She also said that it was encouraging to see that young people are very interested in what’s going on in the world. One Channel 4 programme – Unreported World – had seen a 20% increase in viewership among young people.
On the other hand, she also mentioned a survey undertaken by Channel 4 that showed only 4% of respondents could recognise the difference between true and false stories.
Meanwhile, Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief and chief diplomatic correspondent, New York Times Company, questioned why the coverage of world affairs offered to domestic consumers of public service broadcasters by the BBC was much poorer than that provided by BBC World Service.