Icelanders’ Trust In Media Shrinking

Trust in almost all of Iceland’s news media has fallen over the last year, except for DV, reports RÚV.

According to a new report by MMR, of all the Icelandic language news media surveyed (yours truly, The Reykjavík Grapevine was not included in the report) RÚV is considered the most trustworthy news source in Iceland.

Even so, however, RÚV saw a 6% drop in trust since the same survey was done last year.

The only news source whose trustworthiness grew in the last year was DV. However, DV was recently acquired by Vefpressan, the publishing company behind Pressan.is and Eyjan.is. Pressan and Eyjan were the second to last and least trusted news media surveyed.

Net news outlet mbl.is was considered trustworthy by about 47% of those who took the survey, contra 50% from last year. Mbl.is’ print counterpart Morgunblaðið fared better as one of the most trustworthy newspapers, but even so they were only considered trustworthy by 40.6% of the surveyors contra 46.4% last year.

Roughly 34% trust the online news outlet vísir.is and 34.9% trust vísir.is’ print counterpart Fréttablaðið.

As reported last month, the organisation Reporters Without Borders (RWB) issued a statement expressing its concerns with the perceived decline of freedom of information in Iceland during the last two years.