☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement takes over the internet – but is it ‘news’?
- New from Pew Research Center: How the audiences of 30 major news sources differ by education and age
- In other news: Atlanta Journal-Constitution to end print edition
- Looking ahead: Trump suggests FCC revoke ABC and NBC licenses
- Chart of the week: What percentage of news sources’ audiences are college graduates?
🔥 Featured story
Pop star Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce announced their engagement this week after two years of dating, breaking a record on Instagram and also spurring widespread media coverage. The announcement came two weeks after Swift appeared on Kelce and his brother’s New Heights podcast. The episode with Swift set a Guinness World Record for most concurrent views on a podcast on YouTube.
But is the engagement “news”? Perhaps not, according to many Americans. A March Pew Research Center survey found that just 3% of U.S. adults say they think of celebrities and their lives as “definitely news,” and another 13% think of this as “probably news.” The vast majority say this topic is probably (33%) or definitely (46%) not news. Out of seven topics of information mentioned in the survey, celebrities and their lives are the least likely to be thought of as news, followed by sports information.
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
The American audiences of 30 prominent news sources vary dramatically in their levels of education and median ages, according to a recent Center survey.
For example, the median age of American adults who regularly get news from Univision is 39 years old – the youngest of any source included in the survey. At the other end of the spectrum, the median ages of adults who regularly get news from Newsmax and Breitbart are 63 and 62, respectively.
📌 In other news
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution to end print edition, prioritize online coverage
- Trump administration moves to shorten visa duration for students and members of the media
- After deaths of several journalists in Gaza, a look at the risks reporters face there
- Federal judge orders Trump adviser Kari Lake to submit to questioning under oath in ongoing litigation about Voice of America
- AI-powered search engine Perplexity launches new subscription product that gives participating publishers an 80% cut from subscription fees
- Local newsrooms are increasingly building and using AI chatbots
- YouTube TV signs deal to carry pro-Trump One America News
- TikTok accounts are using AI-generated versions of real Latino journalists to spread false information
📅 Looking ahead
President Donald Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday that the Federal Communications Commission should revoke broadcast licenses from ABC and NBC for what he described as biased political coverage. This statement comes amid formal reviews from the FCC of the two major broadcast networks, among others. ABC News and NBC News are both more likely to be used and trusted by Democrats than Republicans.
The vast majority of Americans (77%) say the freedom of the press is extremely or very important to the well-being of society, according to a 2025 Center survey. But many (43%) are highly concerned about potential restrictions on press freedoms in the U.S.
Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to express this view (60% vs. 28%) – a change from 2024 during the Biden administration, when Republicans (47%) were more likely than Democrats (38%) to say they were extremely or very concerned about potential restrictions on press freedoms.
📊 Chart of the week
Our chart this week highlights how the audiences of 30 news sources differ in their levels of education, according to a recent Center survey. Roughly six-in-ten U.S. adults (62%) who say they regularly get news from The Atlantic have at least a bachelor’s degree. More than half of the audiences of sources such as Axios, NPR and The New York Times also have a college degree. Overall, 36% of all U.S. adults are college graduates.
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Jacob Liedke, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang, Emily Tomasik, Joanne Haner and Mary Randolph. It is edited by Michael Lipka and copy edited by Mia Hennen.
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