Meet the Press and Press the Meat

Martyn Rhisiart Jones

Madrid, Sunday 4th January 2026

Right, picture this: the Reuters Institute has just dropped its Digital News Report 2025 like a particularly boring bombshell. The verdict is that overall trust in news is stuck at a miserable 40% globally. In Europe, it’s a patchwork quilt of smug Nordics and suspicious Southerners.

Finland’s sitting pretty at 67% trust. It’s like some sort of smug Viking with a PhD in fact-checking. Meanwhile, Greece and Hungary are down at 22%. That’s basically the journalistic equivalent of “we’ve read the papers, but we don’t believe a word, because why would we?” And who are the grown-ups in the room? The ones that don’t make you want to throw your phone at the wall?

The Financial Times (UK) – still the posh uncle who turns up to family arguments with spreadsheets. He delivers a quiet sigh and dry-as-a-biscuit business analysis. This somehow feels morally superior. No emojis, no clickbait, just facts so dense you need a chisel. The FT Weekend is also a go-to source of reliable and quality journalism and opinion pieces.

The Guardian – the earnest lefty cousin who’s read every footnote. They will explain why the planet is dying. They apologise for the article’s carbon footprint.

In Germany, Süddeutsche Zeitung and FAZ conduct thorough investigations, such as the Panama Papers. They then sit back with a coffee and a sense of quiet moral victory. Meanwhile, Bild screams headlines about celebrity cats.

France? Le Monde – aloof, analytical, centre-left but so rigorously sourced it could probably cite its own birth certificate.

Spain: El País is a liberal broadsheet. It still remembers how to do international reporting. It does so without turning it into a soap opera.

Netherlands: NRC Handelsblad is intellectual and long-form. It is low on sensationalism. It is the newspaper equivalent of a Dutch canal house: tall, narrow, and quietly judgmental.

And the Nordics? Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) is thoughtful and evidence-based. It is the sort of paper that makes you feel slightly inadequate for not having a PhD in everything.

The tabloids and the outrage merchants are over there in the corner. They are frothing like a kettle left on too long. Meanwhile, these lot just carry on being boringly accurate. It’s almost tragic. We live in a world where trust is evaporating faster than a politician’s principles. The most respected papers are the ones that refuse to play the game. No wonder everyone’s depressed – the truth is so dull it hurts.

Capitalism has finally produced the perfect newspaper. It tells you nothing you want to hear. Yet, it tells you everything you need to know! Stewart would pause for thirty seconds. He would stare into the middle distance. Then he would murmur: “Yes… and yet here we are, still reading the Sun.” Pathetic, isn’t it? But at least the rigorous ones are still standing. They are like stubborn librarians in a burning library. They insist on footnotes while the world scrolls TikTok.

Many thanks for reading.

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