Filipino adults trust journalists far more than content creators and
vloggers as sources of news and information, according to the August 2026 National Momentum Survey.
Filipinos today get their news and information from a wide range of sources. With social media now part of one’s daily life, journalists are no longer the only source of information, and they now share the same space with vloggers, content creators, and influencers online.
The non-commissioned survey, conducted from August 18 to 23, asked Filipino adults nationwide where they most often get their news, how much they trust journalists, and how much they trust sources outside news organizations.
Momentum Research found that nearly two-thirds of Filipino adults get their news from journalists working for news organizations, while 13% get it from vloggers, influencers, or content creators. About a fifth say they get their news from both.
This means that a total of 83.3% of Filipino adults get their news from journalists and 32.3% get their news from content creators and vloggers.
Trust, however, favors journalists by a wide margin. About 3 in 4 Filipino adults say they trust news and information from journalists, while 18.4% say they don’t. Compared with journalists, only 31.2% say they trust content creators and vloggers as a source of news and information, while 64.1% say they “distrust” and “strongly distrust” them.
Disinformation has long been rampant on social media, and generative AI has made it a lot easier to mass produce propaganda or misleading narratives, whether in standalone posts or in comment sections. In this information environment, deciding which sources to trust matters more than ever.
For most Filipino adults, journalists are the more trusted source of news — a finding that is consistent across regions, political affiliations, and generations.
Gen Z Filipinos trust journalists most Net trust, which is the share of Filipino adults who expressed trust minus the share who expressed distrust, is also high among Gen Z (+69.8 pp), Millennials (+60.5 pp), and Gen X (+55.5 pp).
About 84.3% of Gen Zs say they trust the news they get from journalists, followed by 78.9% of Millennials and 74.0% of Gen X.
A slim majority of Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation also say they trust journalists (55.8%), while 27.4% say they don’t trust them as a news source and 16.9% are unsure.
Trust in content creators, influencers, and vloggers is relatively the same across generations, ranging from 28% to 33%, while distrust ranges from 62% to 67%.
Trust in journalists highest among Pro-Opposition
Most Filipino adults also trust the news and information provided by journalists regardless of political affiliation, but trust is highest among those who identify as Pro-Opposition.
More than 8 in 10 Pro-Opposition adults say they trust journalists (86.4%), followed by 81.1% of Independents and 78.9% of Pro-Marcos adults.
Pro-Duterte adults, on the other hand, are more likely to say they distrust journalists, at roughly 1 in 4. Their trust in journalists, however, remains high (68.6%).
Just as trust in journalists is highest among the Pro-Opposition, their trust in content creators and vloggers is the lowest. About 7 in 10 say they don’t trust news and information from these sources, with only 22.1% saying they do.
Independents are also wary, with 68% saying they don’t trust the information content creators and vloggers produce, while 28.7% do.
Marcos and Duterte supporters, on the other hand, are somewhat more receptive, with more than a third saying they trust news and information from content creators and vloggers.
About 3 in 5 in each group say they do not.
Trust in journalists is similar in Metro Manila (73.6%) and Visayas (74.5%), and slightly lower in Mindanao (68.4%). Distrust, meanwhile, is similar in Metro Manila and Mindanao, at about 1 in 4 each, and lower in Visayas (20.5%).
When it comes to information produced by content creators and vloggers outside news organizations, distrust is somewhat consistent across regions from 60.2% in Metro Manila to 66.4% in Visayas (See Figure 4).
Trust in this source of news is lowest among Filipino adults in Mindanao (26.5%) and highest among Metro Manila adults (39.2%).
Conducted from August 18 to 23, the National Momentum Survey was carried out through face-to-face interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,487 Filipino adults. It has a national margin of error of ±2.5 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
Subnational margins of error are ±6.9% for the National Capital Region, ±3.8% for the Rest of Luzon (North, South, and Central Luzon), ±5.8% for Visayas, and ±5.5% for Mindanao — all at a 95% confidence level.
Find the complete survey results on our public dashboard at momentumresearch.ph.
