Local news is playing an important role for Americans during COVID-19 outbreak
Some 61% of U.S. adults say they follow COVID-19 news at both the national and local level equally, and 23% say they pay more attention to local news.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Read our research on:
Journalism
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Three Months In, Many Americans See Exaggeration, Conspiracy Theories and Partisanship in COVID-19 News
After three months of news and information, 64% of U.S. adults say the CDC mostly gets the facts about the outbreak right; 30% say the same about President Trump and his administration.
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Black, Hispanic and white adults feel the news media misunderstand them, but for very different reasons
59% of Americans think news organizations do not understand people like them, while a minority – 37% – say they do feel understood.
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As COVID-19 Emerged in U.S., Facebook Posts About It Appeared in a Wide Range of Public Pages, Groups
In March 2020, about three-quarters (74%) of public Facebook posts about COVID-19 linked to news organizations, while just 1% linked to health and science sites.
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Majorities of Americans Say News Coverage of George Floyd Protests Has Been Good, Trump’s Public Message Wrong
Among black Americans, 72% say coverage has been good or excellent and 85% say Trump’s message has been completely or mostly wrong.
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Black U.S. adults follow many COVID-19 news topics more closely, discuss the outbreak more frequently
Black adults were much more likely than whites and somewhat more likely than Hispanic adults to frequently discuss the pandemic with others.
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Around three-in-ten Americans are very confident they could fact-check news about COVID-19
Americans’ confidence in checking COVID-19 information aligns closely with their confidence in checking the accuracy of news stories broadly.
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Americans are following news about presidential candidates much less closely than COVID-19 news
With Election Day six months away, 52% of Americans are paying fairly close or very close attention to news about the presidential candidates.
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Americans Who Rely Most on White House for COVID-19 News More Likely to Downplay the Pandemic
People in this group are most likely to say the outbreak has been made too big of a deal and journalists have been exaggerating the risks.
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44% of Americans say they talk about the coronavirus outbreak most or almost all of the time
31% of U.S. adults say they discuss the outbreak with other people most of the time; another 13% say they talk about it almost all of the time.
