More people read news online than newspapers

January 20, 2018

Tokyo- The proportion of Japanese people who read news on the Internet using smartphones or personal computers has exceeded that of people reading morning newspapers for the first time, a survey by the Japan Press Research Institute showed Saturday.

It was also the first time since the organization started to conduct such surveys that the proportion of people reading the morning papers has fallen below 70 percent.

According to the survey, the proportion of respondents who answered that they read news online went up 14.3 percentage points from the poll in 2010, which asked the same questions, to 71.4 percent.

Although some 90 percent of people said that they read morning newspapers in the 2008 survey, the figure continued to decrease, standing at 68.5 percent in the latest survey.

For reliability of information, newspapers were favored over the Internet.

The score for information reliability, out of 100 points, edged up for newspapers, to 68.7 points, and decreased 2.1 points to 51.4 points for the Internet.

The score for credibility of information provided by Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, stood at 70.0 points, followed by 59.2 points for commercial television stations, 58.2 points for radio and 45.0 points for magazines, all climbing slightly.

The survey also questioned respondents on fake news for the first time.

Approximately 40 percent of people said they knew the word and some 40 percent of people said that they think about whether the article they are reading is fake news.

The survey covered 5,000 people aged 18 or over in November last year. Of them, 3,169 gave valid responses. Jiji Press