In 2024, the Reuters Institute surveyed the public in 47 countries to better understand the drivers of trust in news. It assessed the importance of several factors. These factors were derived from qualitative research, from existing academic work, and from input from journalists.

The most important factor was ‘transparency about how the news was made’. ‘High journalistic standards’ was next up, followed by ‘represents people like me fairly’.

This appears sensible enough, but I guess fairness, transparency, and standards are subjective. You can never be transparent enough for some people, and who determines what is fair?

Whatever the findings, the news is grim. Reuters Institute data shows a ten-year trend towards disengagement from online news, with interest in news falling and news avoidance rising.

Advocacy is not mainstream news, but it is news adjacent. Advocacy content would certainly benefit from meeting Reuters’ trustworthy news factors. Trusted advocacy content should include diverse voices, meet high production standards, and be clear as to how the content was gathered. It shouldn’t be biased, and it shouldn’t sensationalise.

I’m not sure all programmes could claim to meet this standard.

What I do see is the most trusted advocacy sentiment coming out of community groups. I spoke to one client recently who had piggybacked a respected online user group to create an offline event. The client was at pains to be seen as an equal participant in the established community, not a usurper. It wanted to engage in a conversation rather than broadcast messages from above.

In the news world, I’m intrigued by the work of Bellingcat. The Netherlands-based investigative journalism group specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. It uses a community of professional and citizen journalists, and chooses where to focus its investigations. Bellingcat was born diverse and transparent. See also the very personal work of 404 Media (in the tech world) and The Mill (a local online news report in Manchester), both heavy on the ‘how this was made’ and extremely engaged with their subscriber base.

Niche, maybe. Not on the same scale as the legacy news providers, certainly. But I’d argue they’re all more trusted.