Astro Awani and The Star the most trusted in Malaysia
PETALING JAYA: As consumers are increasingly flooded by fake news, Astro Awani and The Star have emerged as among the two “most trusted” Malaysian source of news, a global report said.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018, the seventh edition of an annual series, found that when it comes to trust, Astro Awani and The Star scored 6.05 and 6.03 respectively, with news portal Malaysiakini slightly behind with a score of 6.02.
“In today’s digital and social media era, news comes from a variety of sources, and Star Media Group takes pride in that our team takes the time to verify news before we upload or publish it.
“We are aware that the people look up to us to verify information, and we take this responsibility very seriously,” said Star Media Group chief content officer Esther Ng.
Ng said with fake news becoming a concern all over the world, The Star Online took the initiative to launch a special section called “True or Not” in December 2016 to verify or debunk viral messages on social media and messaging apps.
Malaysian news organisations still lost out to international news aggregator Yahoo! News, which has the highest trust score.
This is for those who have heard of the brands.
For those who use the brand, Astro Awani scored 7.03, followed by Yahoo! News at 6.61 and the Borneo Post at 6.59.
“There appears to be greater trust in what is perceived as international media as opposed to local, with Yahoo! News being the most trusted brand,” said Prof Zaharom Nain of Centre for the Study of Communications and Culture, University of Nottingham Malaysia campus.
“This has much to do with the structures and patterns of media ownership and control. There are some brands that buck this trend,” he wrote in the report, published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
To establish the trust scores, respondents were asked to indicate their trust in selected news brands on a scale of 0 (completely untrustworthy) to 10 (completely trustworthy).