The News Media Tracker shows data on Americans’ awareness of, use of and trust in 30 different major news sources. It’s based on a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults conducted in March 2025. If you have any questions, please reach out to info@pewresearch.org.
Why build a News Media Tracker?
As the news media landscape continues to evolve, Americans’ news habits are changing. This tool is meant to be a digital product that provides the public with up-to-date, easily accessible key information about what news sources Americans turn to and trust.
In the News Media Tracker, we take a snapshot of the news sources people have heard of, use and trust for news. We examine responses based on age and party identification to map out what the media ecosystem looks like for each of these groups.
How did you choose these news sources?
We limited ourselves to 30 news sources in this survey to avoid placing undue burden on survey respondents, who may have trouble processing an even longer list. We used a variety of criteria to make difficult decisions about which sources to include among the 30.
Knowing that no list of 30 sources could represent the entire media landscape, we included many prominent news sources, while also aiming to capture the diversity of the media environment and sources in emerging platforms. To this end, we took into consideration things like web traffic, TV ratings and the results of previous surveys, including open-ended questions asking about political and election news in September 2024, news influencers in August 2024, and popular podcasts in December 2022.
We also set out to ask about a range of news sources across different platforms (e.g., internet, television, print, radio, and new media like podcasts and social media). Relatedly, we wanted to capture different elements of the information environment, such as legacy news outlets and newer, nontraditional news sources.
The sources include:
- News divisions of three major broadcast commercial television networks (ABC News, CBS News, NBC News)
- Three major cable TV news networks (CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC)
- Two major Spanish-language TV networks (Univision, Telemundo)
- Two major public broadcast radio or TV networks (NPR and PBS)
- Four of the largest newspapers by U.S. national circulation, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Alliance for Audited Media data for the third quarter of 2024 (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post)
- Four outlets named by at least 0.5% of respondents in a 2024 open-ended question asking about respondents’ main source for election news (Newsmax, BBC News, The Daily Wire, The Associated Press)
- One outlet named in the 2024 election main source open end that also was recently given office space at the Pentagon (Breitbart)
- The most-named podcast in a 2022 open end asking about the primary podcast Americans listen to the most (The Joe Rogan Experience)
- One source named in a 2024 survey asking about what news influencer first comes to mind for Americans who regularly get news from news influencers, who also has comparatively high social media follower counts (Tucker Carlson Network)
- Seven news websites, regardless of their original platform, that primarily cover general or political news and had comparatively high numbers of U.S. unique visitors during the second and third quarters of 2024, according to Comscore Media Metrix® Multi-Platform data (USA Today, HuffPost, Newsweek, Politico, The Hill, The Atlantic and Axios)
- One international news website with the highest number of U.S. unique visitors during the second and third quarters of 2024, according to Comscore (The Guardian)
- One business news website with the highest number of U.S. unique visitors during the second and third quarters of 2024, according to Comscore (Forbes)
Why does the study include more outlets with left-leaning audiences than right-leaning audiences?
We selected these outlets based on a number of factors, including their audience size and platform type, but not based on the party affiliation (or lean) or ideology of their audiences, which we didn’t measure until later in the research process.
One factor that may be at play here is that Republican news consumers have a more compact media ecosystem. They rely to a large degree on a small number of outlets and view many established brands as not trustworthy. Democrats, on the other hand, rely on a wider number of outlets.
Why are some circles bigger than others?
Across the News Media Tracker, dots are sized based on how many people have heard of a source, not how many people actually get their news there. Take the New York Post: 78% of U.S. adults have heard of it, so even though a small portion of U.S. adults (9%) regularly get news there, the dot is fairly large.
How did you plot trust and distrust of each news source?
Some graphics in the news media tracker visualizing trust and distrust in each news source used a trust ratio. First, respondents were shown a list of the 30 outlets and asked if they had heard of each source. Of those they had heard of, they were asked whether they generally trusted each as a source of news. If they didn’t trust that source for news, they were asked if they generally distrusted it for news.
Then, we calculated a trust ratio for each source.
- If the share of respondents who said they trusted the news source was greater than the share who said they distrusted the source, the ratio was calculated as trust divided by distrust.
- If the share who said they distrusted the source was greater than the share who trusted the source, the ratio was calculated as a negative distrust value divided by the trust value.
For example, the BBC and Fox News have about the same share of U.S. adults who trust them – 35% and 37%, respectively. But only 13% of Americans distrust the BBC, while 42% distrust Fox. BBC is much more trusted than distrusted, so it has a high trust ratio (2.8 times more trusted than distrusted). Fox News is slightly more distrusted than trusted, so it has a ratio of 1.1 times more distrusted than trusted.
Outlets that are more trusted are plotted on the right in the chart showing trust, and outlets that are more distrusted are plotted on the left.
What does the News Media Tracker tell us about news content or media bias?
It’s important to remember that this study only analyzes the audiences of these 30 news sources. Specifically, we look at Americans’ awareness of each source, whether they regularly get news there, and whether they trust or distrust the source. We did not analyze the content of news produced by each source, and we didn’t attempt to evaluate political or ideological bias in its reporting.
Where can I find the Media Tracker’s methodology?
The News Media Tracker data comes from a nationally representative survey of 9,482 U.S. adults conducted March 10-16, 2025. You can find the methodology for the news media tracker here. You can also read more in the accompanying report.
