By Joseph Bernard A. Marzan

ILOILO CITY — Trust in news in the Philippines fell 10 percentage points to 28% in 2026, the sharpest single-year drop since the country was first covered by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s Digital News Report (DNR) in 2020.

It also marked the steepest decline among all 48 markets covered by this year’s DNR.

The decline erases six years of gains and comes as Filipino audiences continue shifting away from television and print toward online platforms, particularly short-form video.

This news analysis is drawn from an artificial intelligence-assisted analysis of the annual reports from 2013 to 2026, cross-checked manually by Daily Guardian.

Ireland recorded the second-largest fall, at nine points, followed by Poland, Thailand, and Peru, each at eight points. The drop pulled the Philippines below the global average of 37%, itself the lowest level since the report began tracking trust in news in 2015.

The DNR, now in its 15th year, is based on an online YouGov survey of more than 97,000 adults across 48 markets, including 2,021 in the Philippines.

The Reuters Institute, based at the University of Oxford, has published the Digital News Report annually since 2012, with the 2026 edition released in June. Philippine data were first included in the 2020 edition.

The Reuters Institute notes that its online method tends to over-represent urban, wealthier, and more connected respondents. Rural and offline Filipinos are underrepresented, so the figures describe the connected news audience rather than the population as a whole.

Across the 2020 to 2026 period, the data show three consistent patterns: a migration from traditional to digital sources, sharp volatility in news trust, and the rapid rise of video-focused social platforms.

Trust had climbed from 27% in 2020 to 38% in 2023, a period in which audiences leaned more heavily on news during the COVID-19 pandemic and successive lockdowns.

It then held nearly flat, at 37% in 2024 and 38% in 2025, before this year’s fall erased six years of gains.

The decline came even as trust in several major individual news brands remained steady, suggesting that the erosion is tied to the broader news environment rather than to particular outlets.

That distinction matters. When audiences continue to trust the brands they use but distrust the information ecosystem those brands operate in, the problem is harder for any single newsroom to fix through its own credibility work.

The decline was steepest among the least advantaged respondents. Only 23% of low-income respondents said they trusted most news most of the time, against 43% of high-income respondents.

The gap by education was similar, at 21% among respondents with low education compared with 32% among university graduates.

News avoidance rose in parallel, with 51% saying they often or sometimes actively avoided news, up from 48% in 2025, and avoidance running higher among low-income respondents at 55% than among high-income respondents at 42%.

Trust in individual news brands, by contrast, held broadly steady between 2025 and 2026, with trustworthy scores clustered in the high 50s to mid-60s, far above the 28% figure for news overall.

MORE ONLINE, LESS OFFLINE

Traditional platforms continued to lose ground across the period, with television use for news falling from 66% in 2020 to 42% in 2026.

ABS-CBN’s loss of its broadcast franchise in 2020 removed the country’s largest television and radio news operation from free-to-air distribution, a structural change to the broadcast market during the same period.

The network has continued to operate without a franchise by shifting to platform distribution, relaunching its iWant streaming service with news programming, including ANC and DZMM TeleRadyo, and reviving the DZMM Radyo Patrol 630 brand through a joint venture with Prime Media.

The Reuters Institute reported that DZMM has climbed back to 15% of Filipinos, still short of the 20% it held in 2020 before the franchise loss.

Print readership declined on a similar trajectory, falling from 22% in 2020 to 10% in 2026.

Online sources, including social media, remained the leading source of news, holding at 85% in both 2020 and 2026 after dipping to 82% in 2024.

Weekly social media use for news rose from 68% in 2020 to 70% in 2026, having peaked at 73% in 2022

INCREASE IN VIDEO, VISUAL NEWS PLATFORMS

Within social media, the data show a steady migration toward short-form video and visual platforms, even as Facebook retained its dominant position.

Facebook remained the leading social network for news in the Philippines throughout the period, though its share fluctuated considerably.

It was used by 73% of respondents from 2020 to 2022, slipped to 72% in 2023, then fell to 61% in 2024 before recovering to 65% in 2025 and 72% in 2026.

Facebook Messenger, measured separately, rose from 33% in 2020 to 36% in 2021, then declined to 35% in 2022 and 33% in 2023.

It fell further to 26% in 2024 before edging up to 27% in 2025 and returning to 33% in 2026.

YouTube remained a major news platform, rising from 49% in 2020 to 53% in 2021 and 57% in 2022.

It then declined to 55% in 2023 and 45% in 2024 before recovering to 50% in 2025 and 48% in 2026.

TikTok recorded the strongest growth of any platform measured, climbing from 2% in 2020 to 6% in 2021, 15% in 2022, and 21% in 2023.

Its share continued rising to 23% in 2024, 29% in 2025, and 33% in 2026, a sixteenfold increase over the period.

Instagram remained comparatively stable, holding at 12% in both 2020 and 2021 before rising to 15% in 2022.

It dipped to 14% in 2023, returned to 12% in 2024, and then rose to 14% in 2025 and 15% in 2026.

X, formerly Twitter, ended the period lower than it began. It rose from 16% in 2020 to 19% in 2021, returned to 16% in 2022 and 2023, then dropped to 9% in 2024.

It recovered slightly to 11% in 2025 before falling back to 9% in 2026.

WHY TRUST FELL

The Reuters Institute cautioned against reading the decline as a verdict on newsrooms alone.

In the markets with the largest drops, the report pointed to political instability, divisive elections, and a noisier, more fragmented information environment as shared characteristics. It added that some of the reductions were almost certainly a consequence of direct attacks on news outlets and individual journalists, with a cumulative effect of undermining confidence in journalism.

Yvonne T. Chua of the University of the Philippines, who wrote the report’s Philippine country commentary, flagged a sharp regulatory turn as part of that environment.

Lawmakers in the 20th Congress are proposing criminal penalties, regulatory oversight, and takedown mechanisms for allegedly false or misleading online content, with press freedom advocates warning that vague definitions and broad takedown powers could expand state authority over speech.

Chua also documented the Presidential Communications Office’s March launch of “Oplan Kontra Fake News,” which brought major newspapers together to counter false narratives, followed by an Anti-Fake-News Desk and a public reporting platform.

By May, the initiative had moved into enforcement, with the office saying it had referred several cases to the Department of Justice after the arrest of a former broadcaster over a cyber-libel case.

The International Federation of Journalists framed the findings as an operational brief for newsrooms and unions rather than a diagnosis, urging news organizations to state their ethical standards openly and explain them to their audiences.

The report’s Philippine trust figures have themselves become contested material in past years.

Rappler argued in 2022 that the report’s release set off a wave of attacks by social media propagandists targeting the outlet and other independent media.

The Reuters Institute agreed, calling the claim that its work identifies Rappler as the least trusted Philippine outlet false and misleading, and noting that its scores are not a ranking of the most or least trusted brands.

This report was written with the aid of NotebookLM analysis of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s Digital News Reports from 2013 to 2026, and has been cross-checked manually by Daily Guardian for accuracy. Read Daily Guardian’s AI policy here.