☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: Google tests removing news articles by EU-based publishers from search
- In other news: The Onion buys Alex Jones’ Infowars
- Looking ahead: Bluesky emerges as an alternative to X
- Chart of the week: Getting local news from personal connections still happens primarily by word of mouth
🔥 Featured story
Google is testing the impact of removing news articles by European Union-based publishers from search results. The test will affect just 1% of users in several European countries, aiming to assess the impact on user traffic and the overall search experience. Google was previously fined in France for breaching rules about reproducing media companies’ content online.
In the U.S., about two-thirds of adults say they often (23%) or sometimes (43%) get news from Google or other search engines, including 12% who say they prefer to get news this way over any other platform, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey. This is slightly lower than the share of Americans who prefer to get news on social media (18%).
📌 In other news
- The Onion buys Alex Jones’ Infowars in bankruptcy auction
- The Guardian will stop posting on X, citing conspiracy theories and racism on the platform
- President-elect Donald Trump plans changes to White House briefing room
- Trump announces Fox News contributors as part of his administration
- MSNBC’s ratings decline after election
- Chris Wallace is quitting CNN three years after joining the network from Fox News
- Sarah Palin and The New York Times discuss settlement ahead of defamation retrial
- The Wall Street Journal is experimenting with AI-generated summary boxes at the top of some articles
📅 Looking ahead
In the wake of the U.S. presidential election, social media site Bluesky has gained more than 1 million users as some people look for alternatives to X, formerly known as Twitter. Some of those making the switch cite false information and hate speech on X as reasons, as well as X owner Elon Musk’s close proximity to President-elect Donald Trump.
In 2023, five months after Musk’s takeover of Twitter, 60% of the site’s U.S. users said they had taken a break from the platform in the past year, according to a Center survey.
Earlier this year, another Center survey found bipartisan agreement among X users that people feel free to openly express their political views on the platform, with 89% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats voicing this view. But Democrats who use X were much more likely than Republicans on the site to say people getting harassed on X is a major problem (48% vs. 15%). And among those who post about politics on X, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say a major reason they do so is that their views feel welcome there (54% vs. 33%).
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart comes from a recent Pew Research Center survey about Americans’ local news habits. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults (73%) say they often or sometimes get local news from friends, family and neighbors.
However, even as news consumption is becoming more digital, local news exchanges among personal networks still largely happen through word of mouth. A majority of those who get local news from people they know (62%) say they usually get it in person or on the phone, as opposed to on social media (25%) or text or email (12%). The share who get local news from people they know via word of mouth is down slightly from 71% in 2018.
👋 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 Michael Lipka and copy edited by Rebecca Leppert.
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