CNA named Singapore's most trusted and most-used online news brand in Reuters Institute 2026 report
CNA topped the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 as Singapore's most-used and most-trusted online news brand, with four of the top five trust spots held by Mediacorp. The Straits Times ranked second on trust.
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford published its Digital News Report 2026 on 16 June, with the Singapore chapter authored by researchers at Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.
Channel News Asia (CNA), part of state-owned Mediacorp, was named the most-used online news source in Singapore, with a weekly online reach of 47 per cent, and the most trusted news brand, with a brand trust score of 78 per cent — up four percentage points from 2025. Mediacorp brands occupied four of the top five positions in the brand trust rankings.
The Straits Times, published by SPH Media Trust (SMT), was the second most trusted brand at 77 per cent and the third most-used online source at 44 per cent. The digital-native outlet Mothership.sg was the second most-used online source at 45 per cent.
Overall trust in news in Singapore stood at 46 per cent, against a global average of 37 per cent. The report found that online and social media were the most common ways to access news, while television and print have continued to decline.
About 17 per cent of respondents said they were willing to pay for online news, and about 26 per cent said they sometimes or often avoid the news. The survey covered 2,041 respondents in Singapore and was conducted by YouGov between mid-January and the end of February 2026.
State funding for leading brands
The report's Singapore chapter describes a market "shaped by a de facto duopoly and tight state regulation."
CNA's parent company, Mediacorp, is owned by state investment company Temasek Holdings. In the five years preceding 2020, Mediacorp received approximately S$310 million annually in public funding.
SMT, which publishes The Straits Times, Lianhe Zaobao, Berita Harian and Tamil Murasu, was allocated up to S$900 million in government funding over five years — up to S$180 million annually — announced in February 2022 and tied to performance targets including the reach and engagement of its products. The first tranche was disbursed in 2023.
The Online Citizen's listing
The Online Citizen (TOC) appeared in the report with a brand trust score of 41 per cent, a three-percentage-point increase from the previous year, and a weekly online reach of around 10 per cent. The report's accompanying material noted that TOC had been a Declared Online Location (DOL) since July 2023.
TOC's website and associated social-media pages were first declared as DOLs under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), with effect from 22 July 2023, following correction directions issued earlier that year. The designation was extended on 21 July 2025 and now runs until 21 July 2027.
Under a DOL designation, the platforms must carry notices stating that they have been declared as DOLs and warning visitors of a history of communicating falsehoods. It is also an offence for the operator to derive financial or other material benefit from the declared platforms, and advertising intermediaries are required to take steps to prevent paid content from appearing on them. The Ministry of Communications and Information has said the designation does not require the platforms to cease operations.
TOC's Singapore class licence was suspended in September 2021 and cancelled in October 2021, after the Infocomm Media Development Authority said the outlet had failed to fully declare its sources of funding as required of registered Internet Content Providers. TOC's editor said at the time that compliance would have required disclosing the identities of its subscribers. The outlet now operates from Taiwan.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report, now in its 15th edition, tracks news consumption habits, trust levels and digital platform use across markets globally. Samples are assembled using nationally representative quotas.
The report notes that brand trust scores reflect respondents' subjective judgement and are not an objective assessment of accuracy, and that the brands listed are not intended as an exhaustive ranking of the most or least trusted outlets.
