What news sources do we actually trust?

BrandMapp is South Africa’s largest survey of the country’s tax paying base, drawing data every year from more than 35,000 adults living in households with a monthly income of R10k +. Spanning Gen Z to Boomers and older, BrandMapp’s insights reveal that traditional media does continue to hold ground in the challenge by digital media offerings. For instance, Dstv (63%) is still more popular than Netflix (58%), and there are still slightly more SABC viewers (33%) than daily YouTube viewers (31%) amongst the South African consumer class.

Brandon de Kock, director of Storytelling at BrandMapp says, “What we must bear in mind is that legacy media is not necessarily so “traditional” anymore. Especially, when it comes to the delivery of the news. Digital transformation in the media industry means that today you can easily find your top legacy news titles across multiple platforms. There they have the advantage of standing out as long-lived, reliable brands. Though, it must be noted that paid news subscriptions in South Africa remain very low at just 8%.”

When it comes to getting news you can trust, legacy media sources dominate with 43% reading free news online, 40% tuning into the radio to listen to the news and 35% still watching traditional TV news. By contrast, only 20% of South Africa’s consumer class say they get news from TikTok, 21% from YouTube and 19% from X (Twitter) and Instagram. “Even then,” De Kock says, “This is not an indication that social media users are getting their news from some other kind of “new” news sources, because they could very well just be following their trusted legacy brand’s social accounts. What we are seeing is that there is no longer a lot of distinct borders between traditional and digital news media.”

How SA generations get their news

As expected there is a generational divide when it comes to news consumption, and it’s not all that surprising – 53% of Boomers watch TV news compared to just 30% of Gen Zs; while 39% and 36% of Gen Zs find news on Instagram and TikTok respectively, versus only 7% of Boomers. “But,” says De Kock, “BrandMapp also shows that 39% of Gen Zs say that they are reading free news online. So, this up-and-coming generation are just as likely to be engaging with legacy news brands as they are finding different news sources via social media. We find 50% of the consumer class is still drawn to traditional news brands, whether online or in print.”

However, BrandMapp is tracking a general downswing in trust in news media. Trust in television news has dropped by 10% between 2020 and 2024, while trust in radio news has dipped from 49 to 44% and trust in newspapers has declined from 37% to 33%. While this is worrying, these rates of trust are still higher than trust in digital news media. In 2024, only 26% of BrandMapp respondents said they trusted the news they got from YouTube – and the matter of trust for Twitter (15%), Instagram (16%) and Facebook (16%) news was notably lower.

De Kock says, “When we put the generational filter on the BrandMapp data, we see that while 32% of Gen Z say that they trust news on YouTube, 38% of them trust legacy TV news and 33% trust radio news. So, even our purest generation of digital natives are looking to legacy brands and platforms when they are looking for truth.”