Standard Group’s KTN News has been ranked as the most trusted media brand in the country edging out the more popular Citizen TV.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020 shows that KTN News is trusted by 90% of Kenyans as a credible brand followed by Citizen TV (89%), NTV (89%), Daily Nation (89%), and The Standard (89%).
Citizen Radio (87%), Business Daily (84%), K24 TV (81%), Taifa Leo (80%), Radio Maisha (80%), and Radio Jambo (80%) are also trusted brands and feature highly in the ranking in the stated order.
According to the survey, public broadcaster, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) is trusted less by Kenyans (78%) while tabloid news sources also being trusted on a less scale than mainstream media.
Radio Africa’s flagship newspaper The Star is also ranked lowly, and according to the report, it is the second least trusted brand of the listed media outlets at (69%) only being trusted more than Standard Group’s The Nairobian which is trusted by (56%) of Kenyans.
Top Brands
In the top brands category-weekly use category, Citizen TV is ranked top with 58% of respondents indicating that they rely on the outlet for more than three days a week while 72% indicating that they use it weekly.
Daily Nation emerged second with 36% of respondents indicating that they rely on the outlet for more than three days a week and another 70% indicating they rely on it seven days a week.
NTV emerged third in this category with 37% of respondents indicating that they consume information from the outlet at least three days a week while another 56% of respondents indicating that they rely on it weekly.
In the top brands-weekly reach category, Daily Nation emerged top with a backing of 39% of Kenyans who consume information from the outlet for more than three days a week and 61% who use it weekly.
Kenyans.co.ke emerged second with 28% of respondents indicating that they use it for more than three days a week and another 54% who use it weekly while Citizen TV came in third with a backing of 42% three days a week and 54% weekly backing.
“Kenya has relatively high levels of trust in the media, with half (50%) saying they trust most news most of the time. Lively commercial TV networks pull in big audiences for news and are highly trusted,” Reuters researchers say in the report.
Consumption Trends
According to the report, online platforms including social media are the most popular avenues for news consumption in Kenya (90%), followed by TV (74%), Print (47%) and social media (77%).
Smartphones are the most used devices for news material consumption (83%), computers (55%) and tablets (11%).
Social Media
Whatsapp is the most popular social media platform in the country, followed by facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook Messanger.
