Filipino trust in news suffered the world’s sharpest decline in 2026, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report. Yet even as public confidence in news organizations continued to erode, Peanut Gallery Media Network (PGMN) posted its strongest quarter in company history for viewership, audience growth, engagement, retention and institutional recognition.
The Reuters Institute reported that only 28% of Filipino respondents said they trust most news most of the time, down from 38% in 2025. The 10-percentage-point drop was the largest year-over-year decline among the 48 countries and territories surveyed, leaving the Philippines below the global average of 37%.
Against that backdrop, PGMN recorded a record platform performance, generating more than half a billion views between April 1 to June 30 across Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X—easily the most viral the company has ever been. For reference, it took PGMN 18 months to hit its first one billion views. It will take five months at most to reach its two-billionth.
The growth extended beyond audience reach. Across platforms, PGMN recorded more than 50 million measured engagements and content interactions—having leaned into a content design strategy meant to persuade readers to engage and retain viewers to watch three times longer than other news platforms.
At less than two years old, PGMN is now consistently achieving one-third to one-fourth of the monthly social viewership of the biggest legacy media outlets that have been around for decades at less than 2% of their monthly opex.
