Most in the UK Say News Media have Helped Them Respond to COVID-19, But a Third Say News Coverage Has Made the Crisis Worse

Abstract

In this RISJ Factsheet we examine how people think about the coronavirus crisis and how different institutions in the UK have responded to it. This is the tenth in a series of ten factsheets based on an ongoing online panel survey of a representative sample of the UK population, fielded from 13 August to 19 August. We find that (i) a third (35%) say that they think that the coronavirus situation in the UK has been made worse by how the news media has covered it, (ii) the percentage of people who say they have used online news, TV, and social media as a source of information about COVID-19 in the last week has dropped significantly since April but (iii) a majority (56%) say the news media have helped them understand the pandemic, and 61% that the news media has helped explain what they can do in response to it.