☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: Paramount settles lawsuit with Trump
- In other news: San Francisco billionaire expands news portfolio
- Looking ahead: Republicans’ domestic policy bill won’t block state AI regulations
- Chart of the week: Far more Americans use streaming services than cable or satellite TV subscriptions
🔥 Featured story
Paramount has agreed to pay $16 million to President Donald Trump in order to settle his lawsuit against CBS News, which arose over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in the lead-up to the 2024 election. While a spokesman said the president is holding “the fake news media accountable,” critics of the settlement have attacked Paramount for not pushing back against what they call a frivolous lawsuit.
As is the case for other TV networks, there is a wide partisan gap in the share of Americans who say they use and trust CBS News, according to a recent Pew Research Center study that looked at 30 major news sources. While more than half of Democrats (56%) trust CBS News as a source of news, 23% of Republicans say the same.
The lawsuit saga has not only raised concerns about the state of press freedom in the U.S., but some have questioned the business motivations behind the deal. Paramount is currently awaiting approval from the Federal Communications Commission for a merger with Skydance Media.
Large majorities of Americans believe U.S. news organizations are at least somewhat influenced by corporations and financial interests (85%) and by the government and political interests (86%), according to a Pew Research Center survey from earlier this year. These shares include over half of Americans who say news organizations are influenced a great deal by corporate (55%) and political (57%) interests.
📌 In other news
- The San Francisco Standard, co-founded by billionaire Michael Moritz, acquires digital news site focused on the future of work
- Trump moves lawsuit against Iowa pollster and The Des Moines Register to state court
- Trump administration rescinds layoffs at Voice of America after notice errors, but will attempt again
- Media figures call for removal of BBC board member, claiming conflict of interest in Gaza reporting
- Spanish-language journalist granted bond after being arrested while covering protest near Atlanta
- X launches “AI Note Writers” for Community Notes
- International journalist launches Substack-like journalism platform
📅 Looking ahead
The major budget bill championed by the president and his GOP allies has passed Congress, but not before the Senate nearly unanimously removed a provision that would have prevented states from enforcing their own regulations on artificial intelligence for 10 years. While tech leaders and interest groups have argued that a patchwork of state regulations would slow technological development, the sponsors of the amendment worried that the moratorium would prevent companies from being held accountable for the potential harmful effects of AI.
Both U.S. adults and AI experts who we surveyed last year are much more likely to express concern that the U.S. will not go far enough in regulating AI use than they are to worry regulations will go too far.
This debate comes at a time when news publishers are seeing increased referrals to their sites from AI chatbots like ChatGPT. Americans are pessimistic about the technology’s long-term effect on news and the journalism profession. Roughly half of U.S. adults say AI will have a very (24%) or somewhat (26%) negative impact on the news people get in the U.S. over the next 20 years, while just 10% say it’ll have a positive effect.
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart comes from the Center’s new survey on how Americans use streaming services and TV subscriptions.
Most U.S. adults (83%) report using streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime Video, with 55% saying they use these services and do not subscribe to cable or satellite TV. Meanwhile, far fewer (36%) subscribe to cable or satellite at all, including just 8% who say they have this kind of subscription and do not ever use streaming services.
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Joanne Haner, 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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