According to a survey conducted by the Social Research Foundation (SRF) less than half of news consumers in South Africa say the media “strongly” represents their interests in its reporting.

In answer to the question of whether the media represents their interests 44% of respondents said it did so “strongly”, 17% said it did so “somewhat”, and 35% said it did not.

Globally a number of established media companies have struggled with reader and viewer retention amidst conflicts over whether journalists and news media companies were providing the content that their readers and viewers wanted. The United States has been a particular hotbed of this kind of conflict with views around the media being split along partisan political lines.

Dissatisfaction with established media coverage has also been instrumental in spawning a series of new media companies and even YouTube channels that have sometimes come to rival the readership and viewership of established media actors.