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In today’s email:
- Featured story: Trump taps Brendan Carr for FCC head
- New from Pew Research Center: A look at America’s news influencers
- In other news: The Associated Press to reduce workforce
- Looking ahead: Will Trump stop the impending TikTok ban?
- Chart of the week: Young adults more likely than older people to see content from news influencers as helpful
🔥 Featured story
President-elect Donald Trump tapped Brendan Carr, a Republican and critic of Big Tech who is supported by Elon Musk, to lead the Federal Communications Commission. Carr supports the incoming Trump administration’s push to punish television networks accused of political bias. Trump has repeatedly called to strip major broadcasters such as ABC, NBC and CBS of their licenses.
Republicans and Democrats differ substantially in their uses of major news brands for political and election news, according to a September 2024 Pew Research Center survey. Most Democrats (82%) say ABC, CBS or NBC is at least a minor source of political news for them, compared with 54% of Republicans who say the same. By contrast, Republicans (69%) are more likely than Democrats (32%) to use Fox News as a source.
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
A new Pew Research Center study looks at the makeup of the news influencer landscape and its audience. The project includes an in-depth examination of a sample of 500 popular news influencers and the content they produce and a nationally representative survey of Americans to better understand who regularly gets news from news influencers.
Here are some key findings from the report:
- About one-in-five Americans – including a much higher share of adults under 30 (37%) – say they regularly get news from influencers on social media.
- News influencers are most likely to be found on the social media site X, where 85% have a presence.
- Slightly more news influencers explicitly identify as Republican, conservative or pro-Donald Trump (27% of news influencers) than Democratic, liberal or pro-Kamala Harris (21%).
- A clear majority of news influencers are men (63%).
- Most (77%) have no affiliation or background with a news organization.
Read more about the findings from this unique study of news influencers in the U.S. media environment.
This report is from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
📌 In other news
- The Associated Press announces plan to reduce workforce by 8%
- Trump instructs congressional Republicans to “kill” bipartisan press freedom bill
- Comcast will spin off most of their cable TV networks, including MSNBC, into separate company
- PBS writers announce possible strike over inability to secure protections for animation writers, fair compensation for writer-producers
- Guardian and Observer journalists plan strike in protest of the planned sale of The Observer to Tortoise Media
- Joe Biden nominates two new Corporation for Public Broadcasting directors after three leave
- Murdoch family remains in control of News Corp after shareholder vote on ownership structure
- A look at how Google controls internal communications amid antitrust lawsuits
📅 Looking ahead
Questions remain as to whether President-elect Donald Trump will try to stop the ban of TikTok, which must either find a new U.S. owner by Jan. 19 or face a ban. Although Trump tried to ban TikTok during his first term, he has repeatedly pledged to oppose a ban on the 2024 campaign trail.
Support for a TikTok ban has also fallen among Americans, and half of adults doubt it will happen, according to a summer 2024 survey. The share of Americans who support the U.S. government banning TikTok now stands at 32% – down from 38% in fall 2023 and 50% in March 2023. And half of U.S. adults think it’s very or somewhat unlikely that TikTok will be banned in the U.S, while 31% say a ban is at least somewhat likely.
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart of the week comes from the Center’s recent study on news influencers. Younger people are more likely than older people to say news influencers help them better understand current events and civic issues. Among those who get news from influencers, almost three-quarters of those ages 18 to 29 (72%) say this about news influencers on social media, compared with about half of those 65 and older (53%).
👋 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 Kirsten Eddy and Michael Lipka and copy edited by Anna Jackson.
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