Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 (Hong Kong)

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report is published annually by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) at Oxford University, and it provides insights and analysis on global news consumption trends. While the 2025 Annual Report contains a brief section on Hong Kong written by the present authors, only a very small portion of the Hong Kong data is covered. This report extends the coverage in the main report and offers an in-depth analysis of the Hong Kong 2025 data across eight key themes.

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Key findings

Most popular news brands

TVB remained the most frequently consulted news brand both online and offline.

The 2025 survey asked respondents about the specific news brands they consumed, covering 28 offline and 43 online brands. Among the five most popular offline media, TVB News remains the dominant player in Hong Kong’s offline market, followed by RTHK, Now TV, Headline Daily and Oriental Daily News, ranked second to fifth, respectively.

In the online media market, TVB News also remained the most frequently consumed news brand, but hk01.com registered a very close second, followed by Yahoo! News, Oriental Daily Online and RTHK Online.

News trust

General news trust declined slightly, but trust in most brands increased

General trust in the news declined slightly between 2024 and 2025, but trust in a full range of specific news brands increased. While most news brands remain trusted by at least half of our respondents, mainstream media organisations generally enjoy higher levels of trust compared to smaller-scale online outlets.

Public broadcaster RTHK emerged as the most trusted news brand, followed closely by NowTV News, while the small number of digital-only news brands have slightly lower scores, partly because they are less well known by the wider public.

Notably, the media outlets receiving the largest proportions of trusting respondents did not necessarily receive the smallest percentages of distrusting respondents. Although RTHK was trusted by 71.3% of respondents, 12.3% distrusted it. If we calculate a net trust score by subtracting the distrusting proportion from the trusting proportion, RTHK’s net trust was at 59.0%. By comparison, NowTV leads to a net trust score of 62.6%, a few points higher than that of RTHK.

Paying for online news

The percentage of online news payers increased from 17.5% in 2024 to 22.2% in 2025. People who trusted the news in general and most strongly distrusted the news in general were both more likely to have paid for online news. About 20.0% of non-online news payers might consider paying for online news if it allowed them to gain access to more than one news site for a reasonable price.

Concern over fake news

In the 2025 survey, the proportion of Hongkongers who agreed that they were concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet declined from 62.1% in 2024 to 52.2% in 2025, though the level of concern remained higher than that in 2023. In contrast, the proportion of people who disagree with this statement remains consistent with the past years. Respondents saw official sources and trusted news sources as primary places to go to for verifying information.