Trust in the news in the Netherlands has fallen to its lowest level since the first measurement in 2018. This is according to the Digital News Report 2025 from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and the Commissariat for the Media.
According to the research, half of Dutch people say they trust most of the news. A third are neutral, while 20 percent indicate they have no trust in it.
During the corona pandemic in 2021, that percentage was considerably higher. At that time, 59 percent still trusted the news. The number of people who say they have no trust has almost doubled since 2018.
Remarkable is the decrease in news consumption among young people. According to the researchers, those who grew up with social media are increasingly less actively searching for news. Instead, they expect it to automatically appear via platforms or search engines. Moreover, the media repertoire of this group does not broaden as they get older, the research shows.
The Commissariat for the Media calls this trend worrying. According to the institution, the influence of large tech companies is thus further increasing. “Trust in news is an important condition to be informed and to be able to participate actively in democracy as a citizen,” the Commissariat states in the report.
Especially TV viewers trust news
Trust in news is relatively high among people who use television as their main source of news. They regularly receive news items through the programming.
The opposite happens on social media: those who skip news reports get to see them less. “If a user ignores messages about news, the algorithm learns that the person does not find news interesting and will no longer show news,” says the Commissariat for the Media. “As a result, usage decreases – and subsequently also trust.”