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The Radio News Opportunity

By Wayne Clouten, BPR

The recently released Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 for Germany reveals a growing avoidance of news.  The report highlights that this does not necessarily mean people are not consuming news.  According to Julia Behre, co-author of the report, it is more about people “selectively avoiding certain news topics or news sources or news at certain times of the day.”

Key findings of the German Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025# include:

• 71 percent of adults said they actively avoid the news at least occasionally
• 48% say the most important reason for avoiding the news is its negative impact on people’s mood.
• 39% of people who avoid the news say that there is too much reporting on wars and conflicts and that they are exhausted by the amount of news.

These findings of “News Fatigue” in the latest Reuters Institute Digital News Report correlates with various studies conducted by BPR over the years, that found people retreat from consuming news when it is constantly bad news or always the same topic or they feel helpless to do anything about it. This is particularly true of news from outside of the persons home country.

News Fatigue is by no means a new phenomenon.  It has been going on periodically since the beginning of mass media, commencing towards the end of WW1. Fast forward to 2025 with more bad news and issues of concern than you can poke a stick at it and it is not surprising that many people feel a need to restrict their exposure to news content which serves no purpose other to make them feel worse about the world around them.

This development however is not necessary a problem for radio. Typically, when news in the wider world becomes all too hard, people retreat to being more interested in local news and information they can use in their day-to-day life. This can be an advantage for radio.

Connected to this issue of news fatigue is news credibility. Recent BPR studies have found people increasingly distrusting of news coupled to a growing thirst for objective news which is truthful and based on facts.

Unfortunately, as we all know, news reporting is increasingly partisan and a reflection of the reporting persons opinion or suspicion rather than an arms-length assessment of all the known facts. This is largely driven by digitally delivered news where the monetisation of the platform via the volume of stories delivered comes at the expense of fact and context. In addition to this there are thousands of quoted news sources which are little more than echo chambers for various ideologies and agendas. All of this has not gone unnoticed by the vast, silent majority who increasingly recognise the click bait and bias.

In this environment of suspicion and distrust about news, radio news has a great opportunity. Radio news has always been advantaged by its inherent need for brevity and lack of having to point everyone towards a winning daily headline or bulletin such as what newspapers and the evening TV news have had to do. There has never been a great motivation for radio to over-cook a particular news story for the sake of gaining momentary attention. For those far-sighted enough, radio news has an almost unique opportunity to set itself apart from the news maelstrom, but it has to be done right and that starts with the right content strategy and journalistic approach. David Sanger, a 40-year veteran at The New York Times recently summed up the task of good journalism quite well:

“The first rule of journalism is “write what you know.” Not what you suspect”.

The great Walter Cronkite also held strong opinions of what constituted good news: “In seeking truth you have to get both sides of the story”

Would like to know about the radio news opportunity? better call BPR.

Acknowledgments:

# The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 represented a sample of 2,047 adult internet users in Germany.