The quality oriented, the audience engagers, the transparent: Types of editorial trust-building in German news outlets

Abstract

Trust in journalism is highly relevant for society. Within the past years, especially during the COVID19-pandemic, trust in journalism became a recurring subject of public debate in Germany: Journalism is often vilified as ‘lying press’ and the legitimacy of traditional media is increasingly questioned. While in Germany, unlike other countries, we do not see a crisis in media trust, there nonetheless is a certain share of the population being skeptical towards traditional journalism. News outlets therefore need to ask themselves how to win back these sections of their audience and strengthen trust in their work. So far, research on media trust has largely focused on the audience – the journalistic perspective has hardly been examined. By conducting 29 interviews with German journalists, this paper aims to analyze which strategies news outlets pursue to cultivate trust in their work. Three main approaches to trust-building can be identified: The quality oriented, the audience engagers and the transparent. The results enable us to get a clearer overview on how news outlets try to regain and build their audience’s trust – which presents starting points for both journalism practice and research.