Uganda, March 22 -- Perhaps never before has so much news/information been so available on different platforms and at a very affordable cost (or no cost at all) as it is today. Similarly, perhaps never has there been so many people that deliberately refuse to engage with news on whatever platform even when they can afford to do so.

The media today must, therefore, increasingly worry about how to satisfy the former and how to recruit the latter back into embracing news in the recently emerged phenomenon called "new avoidance".

Reuters Institute's 2022 Digital News Report showed how big the problem is. Between 2017 and 2022, at least 38 per cent of people across the world deliberately refuse to consume news in whatever format, up from 29 ...