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For many years, half of the German citizens doubt the credibility of the media. That has changed now, as a new study shows. It also shows that critics of the corona measures are only a minority.
According to a study, the media in Germany are credible to more people than they were years ago. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed consider information from the media to be credible overall, as a survey for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) shows. Compared to previous studies from 2015, this is a high value: last year it was 61 percent, in 2015 it was 52 percent (2016: 57 percent, 2018: 65 percent).
For the study, Infratest dimap interviewed a total of 1001 voters in Germany on behalf of WDR from September 23 to October 5 in telephone interviews. Therefore, the study is representative of the German population aged 18 years and over. The survey coincided with the corona pandemic.
“Congratulations to the work of the journalists”
WDR program director Jörg Schönenborn said: “This study is first and foremost a great compliment to the work of journalists this year.” From his point of view, it is generally a good testimony to the state of society, “that in the year of the pandemic, confidence in the media, public broadcasting, but also in political institutions as a whole increased. Critics of the crown’s measures “get loud, but are only, as the study shows, a minority.”
In Germany, the results show that the proportion of those who suspect political influence over media coverage is decreasing. According to this, 35 percent assume that the state and government tell the German media what to report. That is around one in three people in Germany aged 18 and over. Within the group that believes so, many believe that public service broadcasting is particularly affected.
The proportion of those who suspect political influence in the reports as a whole was higher in previous years: in 2015 and 2016 it was 42%, in 2018 after 40% and in 2019 it was 38%. In addition, the value of the group that considers public service broadcasting indispensable rose one percentage point from 82 (2019) to 83 percent.
