Lisbon, June 17, 2025 (Lusa) - The trend of avoiding news frequently or occasionally continues in Portugal, although with a slight decrease compared to 2024, with women leading the way, according to the Digital News Report Portugal 2025 (DNRPT25) released on Tuesday.
More than a third (35%) of Portuguese people “say they avoid news frequently or occasionally, a slight decrease compared to 2024 (37%), but confirming the growing trend of avoiding news observed in the last decade (70% avoid it regardless of frequency),” the report says.
The DNRPT25 has been produced annually by OberCom - Observatório da Comunicação since 2015, published alongside the global report by RISJ - Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
The tendency to avoid news “is more common among women, people with low or medium education and those on low incomes,” the document reads.
Tiredness with the amount of news (39%), saturation with war and conflict issues (38%) and the negative impact on mood (32%) are among the reasons given for actively avoiding news.
“These reasons vary according to gender and age: women and older people more often mention fatigue and emotional impact, while younger people highlight the lack of relevance of the news, the perception of polarisation, the feeling of powerlessness and the difficulty in following the content,” it points out.
The topic of war, particularly the conflict in Ukraine, “remains one of the main sources of information saturation,” according to the DNRPT25.
“Fatigue with this topic is more pronounced in Europe (with Portugal above the European and global average), reflecting the effect of geographical proximity on news perception and consumption,” the document highlights.
With fieldwork carried out by YouGov, the project surveyed around 97,000 Internet users in 48 countries worldwide in 2025. This year, Serbia joins the group of global markets under study, following the inclusion of Morocco in 2024.
The fieldwork took place between January 13 and February 24 this year. In Portugal, 2,012 individuals were surveyed.
Globally, four in 10 (40%) people say they “sometimes or often avoid the news - up from 29% in 2017 - this is the highest figure ever recorded in the DNR”.
Many of those who avoid the news (39%) “say that it has a negative effect on their mood, while others (31%) say they feel exhausted by the amount of news or think there is too much coverage of wars and conflicts (30%) or national politics (29%)”.
Overall, global trust in the news (40%) remained stable for the third consecutive year, although it is still four points lower than at the height of the pandemic.
“Finland and Nigeria have the highest levels of overall trust (67% and 68%, respectively), while Greece (22%) and Hungary (22%) have the lowest,” according to the study.
“Respondents are clear that the best way for news organisations to increase trust would be to increase accuracy, transparency and original journalism, while reducing what many consider to be biased coverage,” the report said.
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