Level of trust towards media and government has dropped

The level of trust among Malaysians towards the media, government and businesses has declined, according to an international communications consultancy firm.

The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer found that the general public's trust towards the government had dropped 7 points to 39 per cent.

It witnessed a drop of 11 points to 34 percent for the more educated group.

Edelman Malaysia managing director, Robert Kay said the level of trust among Malaysians towards the government is now lower than it used to be due to their perception towards the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) issue.

"The government's credibility was slightly affected by a number of significant issues arising from allegations of corruption and the perception that there were misconducts in the management state government related companies," he said when revealing the results of the 2016 Trust Barometer survey at Publika, on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the report also stated that the level of trust towards the media among the general public has also declined 1 point to 45 per cent, but for the educated group, it witnessed an increase of 13 points to 59 per cent.

The difference between the two groups of respondent is that educated group were those with tertiary level education, while the general public consists of all walks of society except for those with higher education.

The level of trust that people have towards traditional media and social media also differed, where traditional media dropped 8 points to 49 per cent and social media dropped 7 points to 42 per cent.

This could be due to the increasing awareness among people that social media is not the most reliable source of information.