☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: LA protests: Journalists injured, news influencers play a role, and false information spreads
- New from Pew Research Center: How Americans use and trust news sources
- In other news: House approves cuts to cuts to NPR and PBS
- Looking ahead: YouTube relaxes content moderation practices
- Chart of the week: Democrats turn to a wider range of news sources than Republicans
🔥 Featured story
The protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles and the responses from the federal government and law enforcement have created a major news event that touches many facets of the current information environment:
- More than two dozen journalists have been injured while covering protests, including a TV reporter who was shot with a rubber bullet on live television. Press freedom groups have questioned whether police are targeting members of the media. Many Americans have dim views of the relationship between President Donald Trump and the media and express concerns about press freedom.
- The protests are getting lots of coverage on social media, including from content creators and news influencers with a range of perspectives. About one-in-five Americans say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media, and many of these influencers have an explicit political affiliation.
- False images and conspiracy theories related to the protests are also spreading, aiming to fuel anti-immigrant attitudes and anger against political leaders. About half of Americans (51%) say made-up news is a very big problem in the U.S., according to a March survey. An additional 36% say it is a moderately big problem.
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
A new Pew Research Center interactive tool explores survey data on 30 major news sources, including what shares of Americans are aware of, regularly get news from, and trust or distrust each one. It also breaks down news habits by political party and age group.
Read more in the accompanying report, which describes the political gap in Americans’ usage and trust of these news sources.
📌 In other news
- House approves cuts to NPR and PBS
- Florida agency tells newspaper to cease reporting on nonprofit connected to DeSantis’ wife
- ABC News cuts ties with Terry Moran following social media comments about Trump and Stephen Miller
- Appeals court allows White House to continue banning Associated Press from Oval Office, Air Force One
- Netflix buys Daily Beast TV pilot
- Trump Cabinet appointee who regularly appears on Newsmax has financial ties to the network
- China filling information void amid cuts to Radio Free Asia
- The Washington Post hires new opinion editor
📅 Looking ahead
YouTube has changed its policy toward content moderation, according to a report by The New York Times. The platform is leaving up more videos that may violate its rules against false information, hate speech and violent content, as long as those videos are considered to be in the “public interest.” Competitor Meta ended its fact-checking program after Trump’s election victory last year.
About a third of U.S. adults regularly get news on Meta-owned Facebook (33%) and on YouTube (32%), making them the most common destinations for news among social media sites.
Most Americans say technology companies should take steps to restrict false information (60%) and extremely violent content (58%) online, even if it limits freedom of information. But these shares are down since 2023 (from 65% and 71%, respectively).
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart comes from our new report on the political gap in Americans’ news sources. Democrats and independents who lean Democratic are much more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to say they regularly get news from many of the 30 major news sources we asked about. Republicans, meanwhile, get news from a fairly concentrated group of sources, and one rises to the top: Fox News.
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang and Emily Tomasik. It is edited by Michael Lipka and copy edited by Anna Jackson.
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