In Media We Trust

Abstract

Trust is a societal value that is difficult to gain and easy to lose. This article deals with the levels of trust that journalists working in eight post-authoritarian and post-totalitarian countries (Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Czech Republic, Indonesia, Latvia, South Africa and Tanzania) have in various social institutions using data from the present Worlds of Journalism Study. In each country, results showed the level of trust in journalists’ own institution—the media—is higher than the level of trust in both political and regulative institutions. The expression of low trust, particularly in regulative institutions, in the sampled countries represents significantly different results from previous studies about journalists’ trust in countries with longer democratic traditions.

KEYWORDS:

• journalism
• journalists
• post-authoritarian country
• post-totalitarian country
• social institution
• trust
• Worlds of Journalism Study

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague [PRVOUK P17]; the South African National Research Foundation (IFRR); Institute for International Journalism, Ohio University (IIJ) at Ohio University; the Worlds of Journalism Studies project at Ludwig-Maxmilians University, Munich.