☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: Journalists sue Chicago Tribune owner, alleging unequal pay
- New from Pew Research Center: Views toward news coverage of presidential candidates’ ages
- In other news: Israel to return equipment to AP after backlash
- Looking ahead: Bipartisan legislation to help local news with USPS delays and postal rate increases
- Chart of the week: Many Republicans, Democrats think the age of the opposing party’s candidate gets too little attention
🔥 Featured story
A lawsuit filed by Chicago Tribune journalists against the newspaper’s owner, Alden Global Capital, claims the Tribune has paid women and Black journalists less than men or White people in similar roles. The suit is seeking back pay for the affected journalists over the past five years and corrections to ongoing salary discrepancies.
A 2022 Pew Research Center survey asked U.S. journalists whether employees at their news organization are treated fairly regardless of their race and ethnicity. Black (34%), Hispanic (29%) and Asian journalists (25%) were more likely than White journalists (12%) to say that employees are not treated fairly. Additionally, 24% of women journalists said that employees at their organization are not treated fairly based on gender, more than double the share of men who said this (10%).
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
Our new survey finds that Americans have mixed feelings about how much news organizations are covering the ages of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Opinions are split along party lines: Each party’s supporters tend to say that the opposing candidate’s age is getting too little attention.
📌 In other news
- Israel to return seized broadcast equipment to the AP
- ProPublica’s new initiative will build on existing relationships with local news orgs
- Vivek Ramaswamy acquires stake in BuzzFeed
- Google warns nonprofit newsrooms that a California bill could endanger future Google News Initiative partnerships
- Researchers find Meta failed to comply with India’s election laws and approved inflammatory ads manipulated by AI
- UK court rules that Prince Harry cannot sue Rupert Murdoch personally
- Indonesia’s parliament proposes new broadcast laws that would ban investigative journalism and LGBT content
📅 Looking ahead
A bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate this week would require the U.S. Postal Service to reach benchmarks for timely delivery of local news before charging publications extra fees. Amid delivery worker shortages, local newspapers have increasingly relied on the mail for distribution as they adapt to rapidly changing news consumption habits.
The share of Americans who say they often or sometimes get local news and information from a daily newspaper has dropped from 43% in 2018 to 33% today, according to a recent Center survey.
Not only are fewer Americans getting local news from newspapers, but local daily newspapers are now much more likely to be accessed online than in print. About two-thirds of U.S. adults who get news from daily newspapers (66%) do so digitally, whether through websites, apps, emails or social media posts that include content from the paper, while far fewer (31%) do so in print. In 2018, a larger share accessed local newspapers in print (54%) than digitally (43%).
📊 Chart of the week
Our chart of the week comes from a new Pew Research Center survey that asked Americans about their views on how much attention news organizations are giving the ages of the presidential candidates. Nearly half of Democrats (46%) say news organizations are giving Donald Trump’s age too little attention, compared with just 14% of Republicans and GOP leaners who say the same. The numbers are virtually flipped when it comes to Joe Biden: 48% of Republicans say Biden’s age gets too little attention, while only 12% of Democrats agree.
👋 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 Katerina Eva Matsa, Michael Lipka and Mark Jurkowitz, and copy edited by David Kent.
Do you like this newsletter? Email us at journalism@pewresearch.org or fill out this two-question survey to tell us what you think.
