INQUIRER at 29: Adapting as Filipinos’ news habits change

PART I: The state of Philippine news: Trust falls amid changing media habits

PART II: Fewer Filipinos trust the news. Can PH media win them back?

MANILA, Philippines — As INQUIRER.net marks its 29th anniversary, the newsroom is adapting to changes in how Filipinos find and consume news, exploring ways to reach audiences across platforms while preserving the accuracy, depth and public-service role of its journalism.

The shift is documented in the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s Digital News Report 2026. The report found that 70% of Filipino respondents used social media and video networks for news in the week before the survey, up from 66% in 2025. By contrast, the share who used news websites and applications fell from 50% to 42%.

The changing landscape has implications for how news organizations distribute stories, build relationships with readers and sustain public-interest reporting. As the final installment of INQUIRER.net’s three-part anniversary series, this story looks at how its teams are responding to those changes.

In an August article published by the International News Media Association (INMA), INQUIRER.net Chief Content Officer Arlene Burgos summed up the distinction between attracting visits and building a regular audience: “It’s habits, not visits.”

Burgos said newsrooms should use third-party platforms to reach audiences while giving people reasons to engage with their journalism beyond those platforms.

“We should publish natively for the platform, but build a relationship natively in our own ecosystem,” she said.

She also cautioned against treating platform traffic as an enduring relationship with readers.

“A platform referral is rented attention,” Burgos said.

Bringing stories closer through video

The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026 documented changes in where Filipino audiences watch news videos.

The proportion of respondents who watched news videos on Facebook rose from 58% in 2025 to 66% in 2026, while TikTok’s figure increased from 30% to 36%. By contrast, the share who watched news videos on news websites or applications fell from 39% in 2020 to 21% in 2026.

For Danx Landicho, head of INQUIRER.net’s Video Production Team, the appeal of video lies in its ability to bring audiences closer to events, people and experiences that might otherwise remain distant.

“Videos, regardless of format, have the power to engage audiences and make stories feel real and relatable. They can entertain, inspire, educate and empower,” Landicho said. “But in journalism, video goes beyond engagement — it gives news a different dimension by allowing people to see, hear and experience events as they unfold.”

The format can be especially consequential when covering disasters, conflicts and communities whose experiences rarely receive sustained public attention. Landicho said footage can document unfolding events, preserve statements and provide a record that audiences can revisit.

“From interviews with key personalities to the stories of the most vulnerable members of society, video captures statements and moments that can become part of our collective history,” Landicho said. “It can move people to action, show the devastating effects of disasters such as flash floods, heavy rains and landslides, and document conflicts, from armed encounters to protests.”

Choosing video, however, is only one editorial decision. How a story is framed and presented must also take into account what the audience needs to understand and which format best serves the report.

Landicho noted that social media platforms have different audiences, conventions and technical requirements. Vertical videos are common across these platforms, but landscape formats remain useful when a wider frame better captures the scene or communicates the story.

“Ultimately, regardless of the platform or format, it all comes down to choosing the right execution for the story — one that best communicates its message and connects with its intended audience,” she said.

Holding attention without losing substance

On social media, a video has only a few seconds to persuade someone to keep watching. For Landicho, the opening is important, but it must lead to reporting that keeps viewers engaged.

“It all starts with how you capture the viewer’s attention in the first few seconds. From there, the report must deliver its substance — presenting the story through clear, engaging writing and a delivery style that makes the information easy to understand and accessible to all audiences,” she said.

Small presentation choices can also affect how people follow a report. Landicho said on-screen text need not reproduce every spoken word; it can instead highlight key information, important statements and context that complement the visuals. This can be particularly helpful for viewers watching without sound.

The same care, Landicho said, is needed when deciding which images to include, especially when footage involves sensitive subjects. A compelling scene cannot replace verification or justify an edit that leaves viewers with a misleading impression.

“Regardless of the subject or format, our guiding principle remains the same: the video material must serve a clear journalistic purpose and present facts accurately,” she said. “The goal is not simply to capture compelling visuals, but to tell a truthful, relevant and meaningful story.”

The challenge of keeping audiences engaged also comes against a broader pattern of mixed attitudes toward news. The Reuters Institute report found that more than half of Filipino respondents often or sometimes actively avoided news.

Landicho acknowledged that news fatigue can affect audiences but said it does not lessen the responsibility of journalists to provide reliable information.

“While we cannot blame people for experiencing ‘news fatigue’ given the kind of news they consume, we must not allow this to diminish our responsibility as journalists. Our duty to deliver factual and relevant information remains. Instead, we must find ways to adapt to our audiences and how they consume news,” she said.

INQUIRER.net’s video production team

For the video team, mobile journalism is one way to reach people on platforms where they already spend time. The goal is not to force every issue into a short format, but to find appropriate ways to present reporting without losing what makes it important.

“Ultimately, it is about finding new ways to reach our audiences without compromising the accuracy, credibility and substance of the news we deliver,” Landicho said.

Finding the story behind the numbers

Where video can bring audiences closer to an event, data journalism can help explain the patterns and questions that emerge beyond the immediate headlines.

Dennis Atienza Maliwanag, editorial director and head of INQUIRER.net’s Data Journalism team, said the work starts with looking for significant changes, inconsistencies or gaps in available information, then checking whether they merit further investigation.

“We report events as they unfold, but readers also need the why and how. Data journalism helps us explain patterns, question official claims and connect developments to people’s lives,” Maliwanag said.

Deciding which leads to pursue also means weighing their importance to the public against the time and information needed to investigate them.

“We start with public interest: Does the story matter to people, and what might the findings reveal? Then we consider urgency, data availability and the work involved,” Maliwanag said.

One example was the report “Gov’t poverty metrics: You’re not poor if you spend P21 per meal”, which translated the government’s food-poverty threshold into an everyday expense of roughly P21 per meal, based on figures at the time.

The comparison brought an official measure into a more familiar frame while prompting questions about what the threshold captured. Maliwanag said the aim was to use the figures to examine the issue rather than simply illustrate it.

“Comparing that amount with people’s experiences made a technical measure understandable and raised questions about what it captured — and what it missed. That is the value of data journalism: using numbers to investigate an issue, not simply illustrate it,” he said.

The team used a different approach in “P9.7B for NPA-free villages pouring in regions with most of EJKs,” examining funding for villages declared free of New People’s Army influence alongside regional records of reported extrajudicial killings.

READ: P9.7B for ‘NPA-free’ villages pouring in regions with most EJKs

“Bringing those datasets together raised questions for further reporting; the pattern alone did not establish causation,” Maliwanag said.

Screenshot of INQUIRER.net’s INQMetrics page, the data journalism section featuring data-driven stories, visualizations, and in-depth reports on issues that matter to Filipinos. Explore the page and read more stories from the data journalism team here: https://www.inquirer.net/inqmetrics/

The distinction matters in investigations that compare public spending, government programs and social conditions. A pattern can point reporters toward an important question, but it does not, by itself, establish why something happened or prove wrongdoing.

The absence of information can also be significant. Missing records may make it difficult to determine whether a public program is reaching its intended beneficiaries or which communities are being overlooked. But the gap itself still needs to be investigated.

“Missing data can also be newsworthy when they prevent people from knowing who benefits from a program or who is being left behind,” Maliwanag said. “But a gap is not proof of wrongdoing. We have to investigate what it means.”

Keeping the context behind the numbers

Finding a pattern is only part of the work. Before drawing conclusions, journalists must establish what the figures measure, how they were collected and whether the comparisons being made are valid.

Maliwanag’s starting point is straightforward: “An official source is not a substitute for verification.”

When figures conflict, the team checks for revisions, differences in reporting periods and changes in methodology. It returns to original records and consults experts when necessary. The same scrutiny applies to statistics circulating in public debate, particularly when figures are used to support claims that go beyond what the evidence can establish.

“A number can be accurate and still be used misleadingly. Our job is to examine the context and the conclusion being drawn from it,” Maliwanag said. “The question is not just, ‘Is this number correct?’ It is, ‘Does this number actually support the claim?’”

Those checks must remain in place, he said, even when a story is presented in a chart, video or social media post. A shortened format can make a complicated finding easier to understand, but removing too much context can also change its meaning.

“The essentials must survive the edit: what the number measures, its source, the period and population covered, and any significant limitation,” Maliwanag said. “We can change the format, but not the meaning.”

Maliwanag also cautioned against presenting figures beyond the scope of the underlying data. A statistic covering Metro Manila, for instance, should not be presented as a nationwide finding simply because a caption has been shortened; survey results should not be generalized beyond the population they represent.

He said the choice of presentation should also depend on what readers need to understand.

A line chart can show a trend, a bar chart can compare categories, and a map can reveal geographic differences. Interviews with agencies, experts and affected communities then help explain what the patterns mean rather than leaving readers with a visual alone.

That work, however, is not always reflected in page views or social media engagement. Maliwanag said institutional responses, policy discussions and follow-up investigations can offer evidence of a story’s impact, although changes in public understanding and trust are harder to measure.

“Traffic tells us how many people encountered a story, but not everything about its value,” he said. “A report can reach a relatively small audience and still make a meaningful contribution to a community or an issue that deserves scrutiny.”

How Filipinos encounter news

Making journalism accessible across formats is only part of the challenge. Another question is how people encounter news in the first place: whether they actively seek it out or come across it while using platforms for other reasons.

The Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026 offers a snapshot of these changing habits, with figures that suggest the shift goes beyond audiences simply moving from one platform to another.

Between 2020 and 2026, weekly use of news websites in the Philippines fell from 60% to 42%, while social media use for news edged up from 68% to 70%, according to figures cited by Dr. Rogelio Alicor Panao, a data scientist and associate professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Over the same period, television use dropped by 24 percentage points, print by 12 percentage points and radio by 11 percentage points.

For Panao, the relatively small increase in social media use, alongside declines in other channels, complicates the idea that audiences are simply moving from traditional news sources to digital platforms.

“If Filipinos were simply changing platforms, that is, moving from television and news websites to social media, we would expect the relatively new platform, social media, to absorb the shift,” he said. “What we are seeing is not a shift of attention from one channel to another but retreat from news as a deliberate activity.”

He pointed to the different reasons people use social media, where news is often mixed with entertainment, messaging and other everyday activities.

“Social media use at 68-70% does not mean news engagement on those platforms is stable,” Panao said. “It means people are still on Facebook and TikTok but for something else, maybe messaging, entertainment, commerce or to connect with friends and family.”

The figures alone cannot establish how often people actively seek out news on these platforms, how much attention they give individual stories or whether they simply scroll past headlines. Panao cautioned that reported use of a platform for news should not automatically be taken as evidence of sustained engagement with journalism.

Content creators add another layer to this changing mix. The Reuters Institute’s report found that 36% of Filipino respondents consumed content from creators or influencers whose main focus was news, while 46% got some current-affairs content from creators primarily known for other topics.

Panao cautioned against interpreting these figures as evidence that creators are replacing established news organizations.

“More likely, creators are supplementing, not substituting,” he said, noting that audiences may encounter news from creators alongside reporting from television and news websites. The usage figures, however, do not by themselves establish the depth, frequency or accuracy of the news people receive from different sources.

News interest, avoidance and the limits of the data

Platform habits tell only part of the story. The survey also points to differing relationships with news: The share of Filipino respondents who said they were very or extremely interested in news fell from 49% in 2025 to 43% in 2026. Meanwhile, the proportion who said they often or sometimes actively avoided news rose from 48% to 51%.

Panao said the increase in avoidance should not automatically be read as indifference toward public affairs. He suggested that some people may be stepping back because of how news makes them feel.

“People might be avoiding news because it makes them anxious or because they feel powerless to act on it,” he said. “It does not necessarily follow that they do not care.”

He also identified several possible factors behind declining interest and rising avoidance, including eroding trust, news fatigue, perceived irrelevance, polarization and economic anxiety. The survey, however, does not determine which, if any, of these factors explains the changes or whether the same reasons apply to different respondents.

“The survey, unfortunately, can only show a snapshot but not the mechanism,” Panao said. “To disentangle the dynamics, one might probably need to supplement the data with focus groups, in-depth interviews and longitudinal panels.”

That distinction matters when interpreting the findings as a picture of Filipino news habits. The report’s Philippine results were based on an online YouGov survey of 2,021 respondents who reported their own news use and attitudes.

As Panao noted, an online sample may underrepresent people with limited internet access, including poorer and more rural Filipinos. Self-reported behavior also does not necessarily capture what people actually read, watch or skip.

These limitations, Panao argued, are reasons to use the Reuters findings as a starting point for further inquiry rather than a ready-made formula for news organizations. He described the report as “a guide, instead of a framework for Inquirer,” adding that assessing broader audience trends requires looking beyond traffic numbers.

“One takeaway from the report hints at the need to examine relationship depth over raw traffic volume,” he said.

For Panao, the findings do not automatically justify changing editorial priorities to follow audiences onto social media or creator platforms. He warned that doing so without careful consideration could lead newsrooms to prioritize volume over the quality of their reporting.

“Audiences migrating to social media and creator content does not mean INQUIRER.net should suddenly restructure online to chase them,” Panao said. He cautioned that this could mean “embracing a consumer-driven press model that induces editorial overproduction at the expense of quality.”

Instead, audience data should help publishers understand their readers without becoming the sole basis for editorial decisions.

As Panao put it, “Analytics should serve Inquirer’s mission and brand, not define it.” He added that publishers should use broader industry findings to enrich their own audience research and “never let vanity metrics override journalistic purpose.”

For him, the question is not simply which platforms are gaining ground, but what news organizations want their journalism to stand for.

“The more important question is not where audiences go, but what kind of press Inquirer wants to be,” Panao said.

Sustaining journalism

Changes in how people find news affect not only how stories are told but also the business that supports their production. Social media remains a channel for distributing journalism, but its role in directing audiences to news websites has changed. At the same time, some advertisers have shifted their spending toward social platforms.

Imelda C. Alcantara, chief operating officer of Inquirer Interactive Inc., said these shifts have created challenges for publishers seeking to sustain their work in a changing media environment.

“Social media is still a way for us to distribute our content, and we view it as such. While in the past social media gave us a lot of traffic, it is no longer that,” Alcantara said.

For her, sustaining journalism also means giving readers reasons to value what a news organization offers beyond an individual story.

“In the end, the value of your journalism really rests on whether readers find your offerings compelling enough that they are willing to pay for it, alongside other access and experiences that provide genuine value to your audience,” she said.

Alcantara also pointed to the value of connecting readers with communities and sources of knowledge they might not otherwise reach. Such experiences, she said, can complement journalism and offer audiences something beyond the news itself.

Protecting editorial independence

The challenge of sustaining journalism commercially also raises questions about preserving the distinction between independent reporting and material produced for advertisers.

Alcantara said that boundary remains central to the organization’s approach to its content.

“Our news reporting remains entirely independent from content marketing,” she said. “We maintain a strict distinction between what our journalists write and the commercial content produced for brands or advertisers, ensuring that all sponsored content is clearly and properly labeled.”

She also drew a distinction between using technology to support newsroom work and allowing it to take over the writing and editing of news stories.

“Our journalism remains human-written and human-edited,” Alcantara said. “Even with the rise of AI, we will not have AI write or edit our stories because Inquirer is distinct in its brand of journalism, and that integrity is something we are committed to preserving.”

She said AI may assist with supporting tasks such as summarizing research, checking grammar, helping with design and enhancing photos, but the organization remains committed to keeping the writing and editing of its journalism in human hands.

Stories worth pursuing

The future of INQUIRER.net will depend not only on how it reaches audiences but also on the stories it chooses to pursue and its capacity to report them well.

For Landicho and the Video Production Team, that means returning to the questions that give journalism its purpose, even as the ways people consume news continue to change.

“What good can come out of this? What impact can a single news report have on people? Why does this story need to be told?” Landicho said. “I believe that when we return to these fundamental questions of journalism, we can find more meaningful, engaging and effective ways to communicate stories to our audiences.”

For the Data Journalism team, Maliwanag said he wants to see more sustained reporting on public spending, poverty, education, health care and environmental risks. Such coverage, he said, can help establish whether policies are improving people’s lives and which communities are being left behind.

Pursuing these stories also requires collaboration across the newsroom. Maliwanag said closer integration between print and digital journalism could bring data specialists and beat reporters together earlier, allowing them to combine subject knowledge with analytical skills before a story takes shape.

“I want data journalism to be part of everyday reporting, not something brought in only when someone needs a chart,” he said. “The goal is to make data part of how we develop and report stories, rather than an addition after the writing is done.”

Landicho also sees room to tell stories beyond regular news reports, including through podcasts, feature stories, documentaries and special coverage. Bringing these projects to life, she noted, requires coordination among the people involved in production.

“It takes a village to bring a video production to life,” Landicho said. “From our videographers and video editors to our on-cam reporters and producers, every aspect of the process requires attention, collaboration and commitment.”

Measuring impact beyond clicks

Reaching readers is one part of journalism’s future; understanding what its reporting contributes is another. Alcantara said maintaining meaningful connections with readers remains important as their habits change.

For Panao, the impact of journalism can also be seen in whether its reporting informs discussions beyond its immediate audience.

“Beyond clicks and page views, INQUIRER.net’s impact can be traced through external signals that indicate its journalism enters the record of public deliberation and scholarly inquiry,” Panao said.

He cited news reports referenced in academic research, policy documents and formal proceedings, as well as recognition for journalism that advances accountability and public service.

He said systematically documenting such references over time could help reveal whether reporting contributes to consequential conversations rather than simply accumulating clicks.

The perspectives point to a broader measure of progress: Journalism must reach people, but its value also lies in the questions it raises, the public issues it clarifies and the record it leaves behind.

As INQUIRER.net approaches its 30th year, Landicho remains focused on the reason for continuing the work, whatever changes the news industry brings.

“I believe that for as long as there are stories worth telling, there will be opportunities for a news video unit,” she said. /dm