☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: Measles outbreak raises concerns about health information
- In other news: Mass subscription cancellations for Washington Post after Bezos announcement
- Looking ahead: Hyperlocal news platform Patch expands newsletters powered by AI
- Chart of the week: Americans’ views of neutrality vs. advocacy in local news
🔥 Featured story
As a measles outbreak in West Texas continues to grow, so do concerns about the health information Americans are encountering. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the recently confirmed secretary of Health and Human Services, has offered some public comments in support of the vaccine used to prevent the disease, but he has long expressed skepticism about the effects of vaccines and has also suggested alternative methods to treating measles. People have also encountered false or misleading race-based narratives surrounding the outbreak.
A recent Pew Research Center report that looked back on the COVID-19 pandemic after five years found that overall, 60% of U.S. adults are at least somewhat confident that they would be able to find accurate information in the event of a new health emergency. While about three-quarters of Democrats (74%) say they are confident they could do this, just under half of Republicans (46%) agree.
Republicans also are less likely than Democrats to trust information from national news organizations, and at the time the survey was conducted in October 2024, they were much more likely to say that public health officials had exaggerated the risks of COVID-19.
📌 In other news
- More than 75,000 cancel subscriptions to Washington Post after Bezos changes opinion pages
- Portland, Oregon, settles lawsuit over police force against journalists covering 2020 protests
- Report shows rise in attacks on journalists in Europe
- Digg, an early web discussion platform for news, plans its return
- ABC News announces layoffs, plans to shut down 538
- Tom Llamas announced as new anchor of NBC Nightly News
- Amid concerns over press freedom, as Sebastopol City Council in California reverses its media policy
- Inside the rise of local nonprofit news outlets in Maine
📅 Looking ahead
Patch has expanded its presence to local communities throughout the United States using newsletters powered by AI. CEO Warren St. John recently told Axios that the newsletters are trained to pull news and information from various sources and will list five articles, including headlines, summaries and links.
The sources that Americans are turning to for local news have become increasingly digital, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey. While the share of U.S. adults who say they often or sometimes get local news from newsletters or Listservs has stayed relatively stable between 2018 and 2024, growing shares say they get local news from online forums or groups and other online-only sources.
Another survey from last year found that 54% of Americans say artificial intelligence programs that generate text and images need to credit the sources they rely on to produce their responses, compared with just 14% who say the programs don’t need to do this. About a third (32%) say they are not sure.
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart comes from our 2024 survey on how Americans view local news.
Amid debates over traditional journalistic values, most Americans (69%) still say that local journalists should remain neutral on issues in their communities. However, about three-in-ten say local journalists should advocate for change in their communities, with some demographic groups especially likely to support this view. For instance, 39% of adults ages 18 to 29 say local journalists should advocate for change in the community, compared with 20% of those 65 and older. Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans and Democrats also are more likely than White adults and Republicans to hold this view.
👋 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 David Kent.
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