Slightly more Canadians say the media cannot be trusted to make decisions in the public interest as say they have trust in the media to act in the public interest, according to internal federal government polls obtained by Global News.
But the same polling shows high levels of distrust among many other institutions: provincial and territorial governments, Canadian financial institutions, the federal government and social media platforms.
The polling on trust in media was part of a broader series of questions on the media in Canada, questions designed and approved by the Privy Council Office (PCO) for insertion into its weekly polling program. The results of the PCO’s polling program are used by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the cabinet and the country’s most senior bureaucrats to guide their decision-making.
The live-agent telephone poll of 1,000 people was done from July 3 to 9, as the federal government was still trying to push through the controversial Bill C-18, the legislation requiring social media companies to pay Canadian legacy media companies for linking to news articles.
Indeed, the PCO polling data showed a narrow support for the government’s position, with 49 per cent agreeing that social media platforms should pay news outlets for news articles carried on those platforms, while 42 per cent opposed the idea. The raw polling data was only recently released to Global News via access-to-information laws, while C-18 became law late last fall.
So far as trust goes, it was not just the news media that scored relatively low. Other institions also fared poorly. Local governments scored highest, with nearly 42 per cent of respondents saying they trusted their local government to act in the best interests of the public. Less than 10 per cent of respondents said they trusted social media platforms to act in the public interest.
The PCO polling program also found relatively high levels of ignorance about the state of the media in the Canada, with most of those surveyed — 56.2 per cent — saying they believed the number of news media outlets has stayed the same or increased over the last 10 years.
In fact, a 2018 “head count” by researchers at Toronto Metropolitan University found that, at that point, more than 250 local news outlets had closed in the prior 10 years.
In the PCO survey of July 3 to 9, the question that followed the one asking respondents if they thought the number of news outlets had increased or decreased over the decade put a specific number on media closures: “Since 2008, 474 news media outlets have closed in 335 communities across Canada. To what extent is this concerning to you?” Upon being presented with this datapoint, 47 per cent said it was a matter of some concern, while 30 per cent were not concerned. Those in Manitoba were most concerned — 60 per cent — about the loss of those media outlets, while 36 per cent of British Columbians said they were not concerned, the highest score on that side of the ledger.
The poll also measured where Canadians were getting their news on a daily basis. The most common response — 44.6 per cent — was “Your own internet search.” Social media platforms were next at 43.5 per cent, followed by “Conversations with family/friends/colleagues (39.5%); online news sites (37.9%); radio stations (37.6%); TV news channels (34.7%). Just seven per cent of respondents said they consulted a print newspaper daily for news.
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