A trust index developed by the agency rated TOI at 77.6, well ahead of Twitter at 60.7 and BBC World News at 56.5, its findings showed.
When compared to its peers in the print and digital space, the gap was even wider with the next-placed, Hindustan Times, scoring 53.4, and Hindu at 31.4.
The survey also found that half of the respondents who had read any print or digital media in the month preceding the survey had read TOI every day and 62% had read it at least once in that month.
In comparison, 31% had read HT every day and 40% had read it at least once.
Similarly, 23% had read Hindu every day and 33% had read it at least once.
The survey’s findings buttress earlier studies conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, which too had found TOI to be the most trusted of India’s major media brands for two consecutive years.
In the ranking on individual trust parameters, TOI once again came up trumps. In particular, TOI got the highest scores in response to statements like “it provides factual, in-depth news that is without ambiguity”.
No other brand was able to match TOI score
No other print or digital brand was able to match TOI’s score in response to the statement, “It has views from different sources making it more diverse”.
An earlier qualitative survey by AC Nielsen had shown that diversity of views was the single most important factor in determining how trustworthy people find a news brand to be.
Another interesting finding of the Nielsen survey was that respondents said that brands or services advertised in print and digital media outlets came across as more trustworthy than those advertised on TV and digital media channels. “For the top 3 most consumed brands, significantly higher number of people prefer the printed version of the newspaper reiterating the power of print as a medium of trust,” the survey concluded.
