Nearly 70% of Spaniards don’t trust news, report finds

Trust in the news – and the number of people consuming it – are falling both globally and in Spain.

According to the Digital News Report 2025, published by Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford, nearly 70% of the Spanish population say that, in general, they do not trust most of the news they read, while almost 40% admit to regularly avoiding it.

News consumption habits have shifted dramatically over the past decade.

Print newspaper readership has plummeted, falling from 61% to 21% of news consumers, and television is also seeing a decline.

At the same time, social media has become the second most common source of news, reaching nearly half the population.

Experts consulted by the Catalan News Agency (ACN) cite "information overload" and the spread of fake news as the main drivers behind this growing public disengagement from the news.

The report also notes that Spaniards are less willing to pay for online news than people in most other countries.

Only 10% of respondents said they had paid for online news at any point in the past year, compared with an average of 18% across all countries surveyed.

Another noteworthy finding is the still-limited reach of news podcasts, with only 4% of respondents saying they had listened to one in the past week.

40% avoid the news

One of the report's key findings is that, across all surveyed countries, around 40% of the population regularly avoid consuming news. In Spain, the figure is slightly lower – about 37%.

According to the Digital News Report 2025, the main reasons Spaniards give for avoiding the news are, in order of importance: lack of credibility or perceived bias in reporting, the negative impact news consumption has on their mood, and feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information they receive.