☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: New York Times accused of targeting staffers of Middle Eastern descent
- In other news: Report for America will no longer send journalists to newsrooms owned by hedge funds
- Looking ahead: LinkedIn to expand investments in news
- Chart of the week: Germans stand out for their comparatively light social media use
🔥 Featured story
The union representing employees of The New York Times filed a grievance this week alleging that staffers of Middle Eastern and North African descent have been harassed by the company, facing “extensive questions” about their involvement in a related affinity group and about “their views of the Times’ Middle East coverage.” The New York Times has disputed the claims. The situation comes after reports of internal controversy at the Times related to reporting in a Times article about sexual violence by Hamas fighters against Israelis on Oct. 7.
In a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 8% of U.S. journalists said they had experienced threats or harassment from someone inside their organization in the past year. Within this group, 37% said the harassment was related to politics, 28% said it was about age, 22% said it was sexual in nature, and 17% said it was related to their race or ethnicity.
📌 In other news
- Hedge fund-backed news organizations will no longer be eligible for Report for America’s subsidized journalist training program
- Meta says it will stop paying news publishers in Australia
- Telemundo launches election year initiative to engage and inform Latino voters
- How the last Morse code radio station delivers the news
- Startup TollBit wants to help publishers monetize content used by AI companies
- How the shortage of local news coverage affects the Supreme Court
📅 Looking ahead
LinkedIn will devote more resources to journalism and news, according to a report by Axios. LinkedIn says the platform works with more than 400 news publishers around the world and has expanded to 12 new markets in the past six months. This comes as many social media platforms, including Facebook, have pulled away from news in recent years.
A 2023 Center survey shows that 5% of Americans regularly get news from LinkedIn. A 60% majority of news consumers on LinkedIn have college degrees, much higher than the share on any other major social media platform.
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart was spun off our recent analysis of technology use around the world.
Germans stand out internationally for their relatively light use of social media. The vast majority of German adults (93%) use the internet at least occasionally, but only around half (51%) report using social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok or X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
👋 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 Anna Jackson.
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