Article | Open Access
Reinforcing or Rethinking? What do News Consumers Want from Journalism in the Post-Truth Era?
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Abstract: Policymakers and news producers have long grappled with the challenges that fake news and misinformation pose to quality journalism. This has given rise to an extensive body of literature, covering various aspects from the characteristics of fake news to strategies for addressing it. However, the preferences of news consumers regarding the future of journalism and their views on how journalistic commitment to truth can best be maintained remain relatively overlooked in scholarly research. This article utilizes primary data from a survey (N = 4,521) fielded in Norway, Italy, and Poland in 2023 to show that, even in contemporary media environments, people continue to regard traditional journalistic ideals as the normative goals for future journalism. This suggests that journalists in an age of post-truth should focus less on rethinking journalism and more on adhering to its traditional goals of unbiased dissemination of facts.
Keywords: disinformation; fake news; journalism; journalistic quality; post-truth politics; public opinion
Published:
Issue:
Vol 13 (2025): Protecting Democracy From Fake News: The EU’s Role in Countering Disinformation (In Progress)
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© Martin Moland, Jacopo Custodi, Hans-Jörg Trenz. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.