Laura Carollo
Research expert covering cinema and film
Trust in media in France - statistics & facts
The concept of ‘false news’ has become more and more widespread over the past years, monopolizing both debates and news feeds. If the phenomenon of "hoax" is not recent, the advent of social networks has propelled their dissemination, seizing and distorting so-called ‘real’ facts. The controversy surrounding misinformation highlights the problem of the credibility of information spread online, but also that of the confidence and lack thereof of the French people in the media to a broader extent.
The multiplication of fake news, most notably on social media, is one of the reasons the French population tends to trust digital sources less. Only very few respondents were adamant that they had never been fooled by false news, while a great majority of internet users spotted them regularly, especially on social media.
Leading information sources
The majority of French people consider themselves interested in the news broadcast by the media, whereas less than ten percent claim to not be interested at all. 2023 marked a peak of interest in news broadcast by the media, reaching levels last recorded in 2015. While websites or mobile applications of print media titles came in first for digital sources, French teenagers more frequently turned to social media as sources of information. Television and parents came in second and third positions, whereas news websites were only used by about 20 percent of them.Fluctuating trust in traditional media
According to the French population, regional and national newspapers were the most trustworthy media, followed closely by the radio channel France Info and the TV channel France Télévisions News. In 2023, 21 percent of the respondents aged between 18 and 24 years stated generally trusting news, while a greater share considered the news sources they personally used trustworthy. While the level of trust in newspapers fluctuates, around half of respondents stated that events usually happen as the press reports them. Still, French people are also highly suspicious of journalists, and do not consider them completely independent, seeing them as victims of external pressure from politics, power, and money.The multiplication of fake news, most notably on social media, is one of the reasons the French population tends to trust digital sources less. Only very few respondents were adamant that they had never been fooled by false news, while a great majority of internet users spotted them regularly, especially on social media.
