📊 Trust in News
Citizens of three large Latin American countries trust news media less than ever.
Welcome to Latinometrics. We bring you Latin American insights and trends through concise, thought-provoking data visualizations.
News Media 📰
So…busy weekend in international news, right?
Obviously the assassination attempt on former US president Donald Trump was the talk of the town across the world. Journalists dug up info on the shooter, TV news ran the clip on loop, and international media quickly brought out insights on polarization in the United States.
What incidents like this weekend remind us is the importance of news organizations in bringing us facts, figures, and context. But that doesn’t mean people necessarily believe in these organizations, at least not as much as they used to.
Across Latin America (and the world), overall trust in news is slipping per multiyear survey data from the Reuters Institute.
A lot of this is tied to the rise of social media, “alternative” news sites, and deepening polarization. Take Brazil, for example: where a comfortable majority of Brazilians had confidence in national news less than a decade ago, today less than 45% do. Interestingly though, it seems the COVID-19 pandemic helped restore some trust in news in 2020 and 2021.
If Brazil has seen a drop since 2017, that’s nothing compared to Mexico. The inauguration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in late 2018 heralded the beginning of a longstanding conflict between the Mexican government and national news media. As the hugely popular president railed against what he perceived as news bias against him, trust in news slipped over ten percentage points in just five years—it remains to be seen if this will persist during President-Elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s term.
Then there’s Argentina, which has seen a less dramatic drop but nonetheless reflects the even lower levels of trust by most recent figures compared to Brazil or Mexico. In 2023 just 30% of Argentines surveyed reported trusting news media, meaning less than a third of the country’s population.
Regardless, it’s clear that across three of Latin America’s biggest countries trust in news media is falling, and fast. Assuming similar results across the rest of the region, this worrying trend is something that local media – from newspapers of record like Folha de S. Paulo or La Nación to smaller organizations like yours truly – will have to work hard to reverse.
Because a well-informed public is paramount to a country’s education and stability levels.
Comment of the Week 🗣️
Some readers brought up the fact that we didn’t include Haiti in our remittance dependence chart last week. Guilty as charged! We appreciate being called out when we’re missing important countries like Haiti.
Join the discussion on social media, where we’ll be posting today’s charts throughout the week. Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, X, TikTok, or Facebook.
Feedback or chart suggestions? Reply to this email, and let us know! :)