Welcome to Grayling Media’s 2025 media trends report: Trust, Truth and Tribes in a New Media Age. This builds on our inaugural 2024 report: The New Media Age, to analyse our fragmented and disparate media landscape.

It raises important questions, challenges long-held beliefs, and reveals new trends in how Britons seek trusted information, understand truth, and engage with the media.

The ways in which we consume trusted content are transforming, with powerful implications. For PR and media professionals, maintaining an understanding of both the media landscape and political dynamics has never felt as critical.

We hope you find the report an informative read and if you would like to discuss the findings in full or explore how we can help your organisation, please get in touch: media@grayling.com.

Key Findings

• 40% of Brits say that traditional media sources filter the news to fit an agenda
• 48% of Brits want more trustworthy news
• Gen Z uses AI tools (48%) more than twice as often as newspapers (22%).
• More than half of Britons (56%) believe there is no single truth about world events
• Three in ten (30%) of Gen Z Britons chose Nigel Farage as the best communicator on social media
• Half of Reform voters (50%) distrust mainstream journalists
• Nearly two thirds of Brits (60%) say traditional media provides better accounts of world events versus 22% for new media
• Only 16% trust YouTube political creators (49% distrust them), while 40% trust journalists at large news organisations and 44% trust national radio.

In partnership with More in Common, this year’s research explores how people are navigating a world where the lines between fact and opinion are increasingly blurred. It examines the growing influence of algorithms and AI-generated content, and what these changes mean for trust in media, institutions, politics and brands.

The findings have already sparked national debate, from GB News calling it a “bombshell poll”, to The Observer UK podcast on the role of AI, and an in-depth interview on BBC‘s The Media Show.

At a time when misinformation spreads faster than ever, our report asks: who do we trust, and why?

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT