Widespread scepticism towards the news remains prevalent, and concern about disinformation has reached an all-time high
The assessment of the public media is positive, with RTVE’s credibility having increased significantly over the past year
Interest in current affairs is on the rise, confidence is stabilising, and news brands maintain a level of credibility far superior to that of social media and artificial intelligence, at a time when concern about fake news has reached its highest level on record. This is the picture painted by the Digital News Report 2026, which, following a decade of bad news for the Spanish media, presents a considerably optimistic outlook.
The Digital News Report, commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and produced by researchers at the University of Navarra, is based on data collected via an online panel of over 2,000 people. Its outlook for 2026 is that of “a news ecosystem in a state of constant transition, where the ways of staying informed from the past coexist with dynamics that are still open and uncertain”.
Although they continue to share space with other platforms, news brands remain central to the news intake of a large section of the population. And the trust placed in selected brands – including RTVE – is a positive sign, although it is not yet sufficient to suggest a reversal of the trend.
Some 33% of Spaniards believe that the news can be trusted, compared with 39% who do not. This is an improvement on last year’s report, but the balance remains negative and Spain continues to fall below the average for the 48 countries analysed. The report emphasises that the situation remains very fragile.
Another interesting point in this regard is how that level of trust varies not only according to ideology – with those at the extremes being the most sceptical – or age – with the greatest improvement seen among younger people – but also depending on the main source used to obtain information. Thus, television viewers are the most trusting, whilst those who get their news mainly from social media – an increasingly large group – are less trusting.
Alongside the stabilisation of the decline in trust in the news, one of the most significant findings of the report is that news brands retain a level of credibility far superior to that of social media and AI chatbots. This is particularly significant in a context where 60% of users access news via algorithms.
The climate of concern over disinformation is bolstering the position of fact-checked media and professional journalism. 74% of those surveyed are concerned about distinguishing between what is true and what is false in online news, the highest figure in the entire series. Against this backdrop of uncertainty and noise, news brands appear to still maintain their role as anchors for quality information, and are the most frequently chosen in the few instances where people decide to pay.
54% of Spaniards say they are very or extremely interested in current affairs. This figure – three percentage points higher than in 2025 and the highest in the last four years – is one of the most positive findings in the 2026 report. Furthermore, the upturn is fairly widespread across the demographic spectrum: it is particularly evident among those aged 65 and over and the 35–44 age group, but is also notable among those under 35.
Despite the surge in interest, paying for digital news remains a minority practice in Spain, with only 9% of respondents doing so – a figure below the international average of 15%.
And the proportion of people who actively avoid the news remains high. Thirty-seven per cent say they have actively avoided the news over the past year, one percentage point more than in 2025. This avoidance of the news is lower in Spain than the Western European average, but higher than in Nordic countries such as Sweden or Finland.
Political disengagement appears to be the clearest ideological predictor of disengagement from the news, which is most pronounced among those who do not identify with either side of the left-right political spectrum. And beyond ideological factors, one of the key factors in understanding this avoidance is trust in the media: those who express the highest levels of trust are less likely to avoid the news.
Furthermore, this year’s Digital News Report highlights a new angle of analysis regarding the tendency to avoid the news: the primary source of information. Thus, users who rely on podcasts, social media or artificial intelligence tools as their primary source exhibit high levels of news avoidance, whilst this is lower among users of online media. “The association between primary news source and news avoidance is statistically highly significant, suggesting that the channel through which information is accessed is not neutral with regard to attitudes towards the news,” the report notes.
Attitudes towards public service media in Spain lie somewhere between the strong support they receive in the Nordic countries and the widespread rejection seen in other Mediterranean countries. Spain therefore occupies a middle ground.
35% of Spaniards believe that public media have a positive impact on the country, compared with 28% who view them negatively. Among those who view the role of public media in Spain positively, the main reason centres on universal access to information. This, the report explains, reinforces the idea of public media as a basic information infrastructure, which is particularly relevant in areas where commercial media have a weaker presence.
As the report itself points out, the negative assessment is essentially a political criticism: the influence of political interests is the predominant criticism. This is a cross-cutting criticism, but one shaped by ideology: it is more pronounced among those on the right and less so among those in the centre or on the left.
In this context, RTVE has made one of the most notable gains in credibility this year, with a four-point rise. As the report highlights, RTVE remains more credible among the left than the right, but shows progress across the board. Its rise has seen it reach 52% trust, compared to 21% who are neutral and 28% who remain distrustful. "RTVE has made one of the most notable gains of the year," the report states.
Furthermore, the report highlights the public broadcaster as an exception when it comes to converting offline viewers to digital. With a 12% weekly digital audience share, it is the only television channel to exceed 10% online and the one with the best relative conversion rate between offline and digital audiences.
This is also reflected in the total net reach – the sum of exclusively offline, exclusively online and dual consumption – which, as the report explains, provides the most accurate picture of each brand’s actual size. Whilst most television and radio stations have failed to transfer their influence to the online world, RTVE presents a more balanced profile, with a net reach of 34% that places it second in the ranking, representing a four-point increase compared to 2025.
Whilst public confidence appears to be stabilising, young people’s disengagement from the news is becoming more pronounced. “Never before has a generation been so connected and, at the same time, so detached from conventional news reporting,” the report notes.
The fact is that young people access the news less frequently, show less interest and trust in it, and use very different sources to those of the general population, particularly audiovisual social media. The proportion of ‘news-disengaged’ young people – those who have neither trust in nor interest in the news – stands at 53% of those under 25, compared with 35% of the general population.
On the other hand, generalist – rather than specialist – content creators are establishing themselves as a source of information for almost half of young people aged 18 to 24. As the age of respondents increases, the consumption of news generated by content creators decreases significantly.
Although only 3% of those under 25 cite AI chatbots as their main source of news, as many as 19% admit to having used them in the week leading up to the survey – 11 percentage points above the national average.
One in three Spaniards relies on a single source for their news. This trend is confirmed in this year’s report. And although the proportion of those who use more than five brands has risen for the first time since 2016, media pluralism remains far lower than in the past.
Furthermore, almost 10% of respondents do not use any news brand in a typical week. In this context, the report distinguishes between former users and never-users. Television illustrates the first issue. It remains the most widely used weekly source, but has lost 20 percentage points since 2017, and this decline is explained by a process of abandonment, of losing the habit: two out of three people who do not currently use television to keep up to date with the news did so previously. In contrast, for radio and newspapers, the decline is more a result of a lack of adoption: almost half of those who do not use these media to stay informed today never did so in the first place.
However, the report notes that Spain’s most distinctive feature within the context of Western Europe is the high level of social media use as a source of weekly news. This trend is marked by a generational divide: social media is becoming increasingly important among younger people, whilst the role of television grows with age.
And although it is also influenced by age, the report confirms the growing popularity of video news even among the over-65s. The importance of this format is on the rise thanks to greater access to mobile devices – the most commonly used devices for staying informed, with a 19-point increase since 2017 and usage in Spain above the global average – and the ability to tailor content to specific audiences.
Regarding sources, the 2026 report raises an important question: whether users click through to original sources when accessing news via search engines, social media or AI chatbots (used by 8% of respondents to stay informed). The paradox here is that although chatbots inspire the least trust – 46% are sceptical – this does not necessarily lead to more clicks to verify the information. “Scepticism, on its own, does not create verification habits if the environment does not facilitate access to the source,” the report concludes.
An article written by Paula Guisado (RTVE), initially published on 16 June 2026, 01:00 (CEST)