The internet has now got ahead of television as the most widespread source of news among the British public for the first time, UK government research has revealed.
A use and attitudes survey by the UK government’s media regulator the Office of Communications shows a greater proportion of the public than ever is getting their news online, and that new media has overtaken television for the first time. The regulator states: “Television is no longer the single main source of news for UK adults… the big driving factor is the increasing use of social media for news”.
71 per cent of the public now get news online from all sources, from traditional media outlets with online presence to posts on social media. This is up five points in five years, while Television has seen a precipitous fall, going down ten points to 70 per cent since 2018.
The single most consumed source of news is still BBC One news bulletins, Ofcom says, but social media as a whole has overtaken it at 52 per cent. This is down, the regulator says, a “generational shift to online news”, while pointing out that online news is “often seen as less reliable”. Their research also shows the BBC still holds a stranglehold over opinion-forming with their BBC One and printed newspaper rated most likely to help “me make up my mind”, even if newspaper consumption continues to fall and now only reaches 34 per cent of people.
Top BBC figure Fiona Bruce, the face of its primary political news output, has expressed her alarm over her medium losing out to decentralised social media the state broadcaster can’t control to such an extent, states The Guardian. She said: “it’s worrying that social media is being increasingly used as a news source. It’s not just a problem for journalists, it’s a problem for all of us. And once a fake story is out there, it’s almost impossible to correct. I know, I’ve tried. Good luck trying to get anything taken down from X [formerly Twitter]”.
The falling prominence of television in the UK — although evidently some time yet remains until it is totally replaced — follows years of reports of the number of Britons paying the near-mandatory licence fee, a television tax, which funds the state broadcaster the BBC. Under British law any household which has a television or digital device that receives live broadcasts must pay the tax, even if the household never consumes BBC content.
In 2022 it was reported the BBC had lost 270,000 payers in the past year, having previously lost 200,000 in the year to 2020. But 2023 was the most remarkable year of all, with half-a-million cutting the cord in one year, leaving the BBC with 23.9 million households still paying the £170 charge.