About 30 percent of the French claim to regularly read a national or regional daily newspaper or general news magazine, whether in paper or digital format, whereas 18 percent read a printed newspaper rarely and 22 never. As French people tend to read less and less newspapers, that loss of interest is reflected in the household consumption expenditure of newspapers and books, which has been steadily decreasing, as well as the number of companies in the newspaper printing industry.
Established newspapers still manage to play their cards right in the face of strong competition and prosper in opposition to the printed newspaper industry. The newspaper Le Monde was leading in terms of paid daily circulation volume in 2022, followed by Le Figaro. La Manche Libre topped the list of the most popular regional weekly newspapers and Diverto the magazine ranking that same year.
The shift to digital, however, is not always a smooth one. Indeed, the easy publication of various information is a fertile breeding ground for the dissemination of erroneous or misleading data. This is all the more true on social media, where many unverified sources are liked and shared en masse. In 2020, more than half of French people said they had already been fooled by fake news on the internet.
This phenomenon is all the more damaging at a time when French people's confidence in traditional media is declining. While the press is outstripped by television and the internet as a source of information, less than half of the French say that the news press is a reliable and trustworthy source of information.
