Publishers fail to profit from video news boom, study finds

Social media networks and video platforms have overtaken television and news websites as the primary source of news globally, according to the Reuters Digital News Report 2026. The annual study, which surveyed 100,000 people across 48 countries, found that this shift is driven less by social media growth and more by a sharp decline in the use of traditional formats. In the United States, more than a third of respondents under 25 reported they had never regularly watched TV newscasts or visited news websites.

"They're not only leaving, they're not even starting," said Jim Egan, the report's lead author, at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. For European publishers and broadcasters already struggling with declining print revenues, this represents a fundamental breakdown in their direct relationship with the next generation of news consumers. The study was carried out by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, with the German portion handled by the Leibniz Institute for Media Research in Hamburg.

The report highlights a frustrating paradox for the media business. While 75% of respondents watch news videos weekly, publishers are failing to convert this demand into traffic for their own platforms. "Despite the evident popularity of video as a format, audiences are not responding positively to on-site video," Egan noted. Instead, audiences are flocking to platforms like YouTube, used for news by 34% of respondents globally, and TikTok, which is used by 20%.

This migration carries significant implications for media companies' content strategies. The data contradicts the assumption that young audiences only consume short-form clips. Roughly 20% of respondents regularly watch videos exceeding 20 minutes, and a similar share follow live news programs on YouTube. Furthermore, a quarter of those surveyed globally are watching these platform-based news videos on their televisions, directly competing with traditional broadcast news in the living room.

This structural shift is colliding with a deepening crisis of confidence. Overall trust in the news fell by at least three percentage points in 29 of the 48 countries surveyed, leaving just 37% of global respondents saying they mostly trust the news. "Data shouldn't move that much in a year," Egan warned. Yet, audiences are increasingly turning to the very platforms where trust is lowest. "There's an irony here that people are moving more and more to platforms that they trust less," he said.

Emerging technologies are adding further uncertainty to the market. The share of people using AI chatbots for news grew from 7% to 10% last year, which Egan described as "fast but not explosive growth." "Trust in AI chatbots and news from them is very low at the moment, but that's not going to last forever," he added. Meanwhile, so-called news influencers currently cover all news needs for only 10% of users, indicating they are not yet a viable replacement for established media.

The Reuters Institute, which receives financial support from Google, framed its findings as a necessary reality check for the industry. "We do this as an exercise in trying to insert some facts and some comparative analysis across different markets into an industry and into an ecosystem that is full of opinion but does not always know what's actually going on," Egan told DW. Despite the grim metrics, he maintained that journalism remains essential. "Journalism still matters — in fact, in many ways it matters more than ever," he said.