☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: Elon Musk uses X to spread election security doubts
- In other news: Microsoft and OpenAI announce local news project
- Looking ahead: Election officials trying to debunk false information
- Chart of the week: How Americans rate the media on election coverage
🔥 Featured story
Elon Musk has frequently used X (formerly Twitter), the social media site he owns, to fuel doubts about the security of the upcoming presidential election, according to a report from CBS News. Researchers at CBS found that among hundreds of posts by Musk about election security this year, 55% either contain misleading or false statements, or amplify posts that do this.
This comes at a time when 65% of U.S. X users say getting news is a reason they use the platform, according to a 2024 Center survey. And 59% of X users cite keeping up with politics as a reason for using it. At the same time, the vast majority of Americans who regularly get news on X say they at least sometimes see news there that seems inaccurate, including 37% who see this extremely or fairly often.
There have been major shifts in the way Republicans and Democrats view the site in recent years. In 2021, Democratic users (including Democratic-leaning independents) were more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners who use the site to say Twitter was mostly good for American democracy, while Republicans were much more likely to say it was mostly bad. But those patterns are now flipped: Republican users are now twice as likely as Democratic users to say X is mostly good for democracy (53% vs. 26%), while Democrats are three times as likely as Republicans to say it is mostly bad (39% vs. 13%).
📌 In other news
- Microsoft and OpenAI announce $10 million local news project
- Ex-OpenAI researcher alleges the company violated copyright law
- Trump threatens actions against journalists and media outlets if he’s elected
- Argentina president discredits journalists
- Fake Catholic newspapers spread political misinformation
- Israel, Hamas promote competing narratives of Sinwar’s final moments
- Anti-Ukraine videos spread through conservative influencer network
- NYT union files unfair labor practice charge
📅 Looking ahead
With voting already underway, election officials are trying to address an onslaught of disinformation in real time ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5. While several state and local election officials are working to quickly debunk false narratives regarding claims of illegal voting or miscounted ballots, they also are urging people to verify the information they see on social media.
In a recent survey, we found that most U.S. adults (73%) say they have seen inaccurate election news at least somewhat often, and about half (52%) say they find it difficult to determine what is true and what is not. Republicans and independents who lean toward the GOP are more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to express these views. For instance, Republicans are about twice as likely as Democrats to say they see inaccurate election news extremely or very often (51% vs. 24%).
📊 Chart of the week
Our chart this week looks at Americans’ views on how the news media have done covering the 2024 presidential election. According to our recent survey, Republicans are much more critical of election coverage than Democrats: 60% of Republicans say the news media have not covered the 2024 presidential campaign well, compared with just 22% of Democrats. These patterns were almost identical at a similar point in the 2020 election cycle.
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Sarah Naseer, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang and Emily Tomasik. It is edited by Michael Lipka and copy edited by Rebecca Leppert.
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