More people in Japan are consuming online news than watching TV or reading newspapers, but they don’t necessarily trust what they read, according to a recent report from the Japan Press Research Institute.

The report, which is based on 2,665 responses gathered via a door-to-door survey between July and August this year, asked recipients about their news consumption habits as well as how much trust they placed in each of these forums.

Some 46.5% of respondents reported checking news online daily, slightly more than the 46.1% who said they watched commercial television every day. Around 35.8% turned to NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, for daily news, while 33.4% relied on newspapers. Radio was the least-used medium, with 9.2% tuning in each day.

But while online news was the most accessed news source, in terms of trustworthiness, it trails behind traditional media sources.

On a scale of 100 points, NHK received the highest rating for trustworthiness with 66.8 points, just a fraction ahead of newspapers at 66.2. Online news was ranked 47.4 — a continued decline from 58.0 in 2008.

Despite ranking newspapers as among the most trustworthy sources, readership was in decline. The newspaper readership rate fell to 50.1% this year, down 3.7 percentage points year on year. The decline has continued since the survey began in 2008, when the number of newspaper readers was 88.6%.

Some 40.7% of all respondents said that they intend to continue to subscribe to newspapers — in 2018, the number was 58.5%. Some said they still read newspapers but relied on free access through libraries or online sources.　　

In June, the Reuters Institute Japan report painted a similar picture, surmising that “broadcasters are losing their audiences to YouTube and other video networks. Traditional media are also struggling to find sustainable business models as the shift to digital gathers pace.”