Ofcom reveals top-ranked news sources in the UK
TV was the top-ranked platform for Covid-19 news in Ofcom’s new survey, while the BBC, ITV, Sky News, Guardian and The Times were among the most valued news brands.
In its latest News Consumption in the UK, Ofcom found that despite the rising popularity of the internet and social media, TV remains the most-used news platform in the UK, with 73% of TV news consumers rating it between seven and ten out of ten for quality of news provision and 72% saying it helped them understand Covid-19 restrictions.
The online trends data shows that TV is the most-used platform for news (79%), followed by the internet (73%), with half of adults using social media (49%) and/or other websites/apps (49%). However, fewer than half now use the radio for news (46%) and less than a third use print newspapers (32%).
Use of TV is most prevalent among the 65+ age group (93%), while the internet is the most-used platform for news consumption among 16-24s (89%) and those from minority ethnic groups (85%).
Around half (49%) of UK adults claim to use social media for news and 49% also say they use ‘other websites and apps’ – i.e. any non-social media sources of news, such as websites and apps of news organisations, newspapers or other apps (e.g. LADbible).
Around a fifth (19%) of UK adults say they use news aggregators, and 25% say they use search engines for news, a decline from 2020. Only 1 in 10 adults said that they use podcasts to consume news, while 12% of those using social media for news turn to TikTok.
The most used news sources
The survey found that BBC One remains the most used news source across any platform (62%), followed by ITV (46%), Facebook (36%), the BBC website/app (31%), the BBC News channel (31%) and Sky News Channel (30%).
Ofcom data shows that the usage of BBC One has remained unchanged since 2020, but usage of ITV and Facebook have both decreased. Usage of Channel 4, BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 1 have also decreased over the last year.
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