South Africa, Feb. 18 -- The media continues to be plagued by trust issues, particularly in developed countries. In South Africa, trust in the media declined further in 2019 according to the recently launched Edelman Trust Barometer.

This annual survey, now in its 20th year, tracks trust and credibility across 28 global markets and looks at business, NGOs, government and the media.

Trust is a function of both competence and ethics. Only business was seen as competent and only NGOs were seen as ethical. To exacerbate the situation, ethics is considered much more important than competence as a driver of trust - in fact three times more important.

Media was seen as lacking in both competence and ethics, especially in developed markets whe...