A (2:23)

Yeah.

C (2:24)

With different perspectives on something. So I like Ezra and the other one, you know, baseball season starting up, and I'm a baseball fan. This podcast called Rates and Barrels that I listen to, it's associated with the athletic. Really smart conversations about baseball and everything related to that. So. So that's the other one, I'd say.

A (2:44)

Okay, which. Who's your team?

C (2:47)

I'm from Boston originally, so I'm a Red Sox.

A (2:48)

That was it.

C (2:50)

Yeah.

A (2:51)

Well, let it slide because we need you to be here on the episode, but good choices. Ezra Klein. Read him a lot of Vox and then. Yeah, moved over. He's with the Times, right?

C (3:00)

He's with the New York Times now. Yeah.

A (3:02)

Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna have to give his podcast a listen. Jenny, how about for you, aside from

B (3:07)

the Marketer podcast, a longtime listener. Heavy listener, but good. Hang with Amy Poehler. I'll see and listen to every once in a while. It feels like a great conversation with friends, obviously, people who are not my friends, but it just is some interesting conversations.

C (3:25)

Yeah, I don't. I. I see clips from that on social media and I'm always like, wow, that seems fun. I've never actually listened to the whole thing, but I should. I should check it out.

A (3:31)

Yeah, I've heard great things, too. A. A Bit of Optimism is one of my favorites by Simon Sinek. Really great conversations. And I always learn I have to bring a notepad most of the time because I learned so much and then forget it all as soon as it's finished. But it's brilliant. Really good stuff. But there are two guests for today. We're really happy to have them on the show. Today's real topic, what we'll be discussing. America is rewriting its relationship with news. So we are thrilled to have Pew Research join the show. I've been using their research since the beginning of time. Jenny might have been using them before that. Oh, yeah, yeah. She. Before time existed. She's been using peer research. Right. Jenny, We've. We've had a really great relationship with them, and we rate them at the very top in terms of credibility, in terms of authority on things. And it's really one of our huge go to sources.

B (4:32)

Absolutely. I. I demanded to be on this podcast. Thank you. She came to my home, humored me because. Yeah. I think since 2000, we've been citing Pew Research. I sent Marcus a very old chart from our database from 2006 that some of the first. And about news, too, which is great. So, so reputable. I agree. Top Maybe, you know, on par with just maybe the census or.

C (5:01)

Stop, you guys. You're going to make me blush over here. Take it easy. Thank you, though. We appreciate the kind words, truly.

A (5:08)

Yeah, it's. It's very true. We've. Yeah, we wouldn't say if it wasn't. And yeah, they cover a lot of great stuff, but the conversation we wanted to have with them with Mike today was about news. There's a lot of coverage of this particular topic. And so we'll start with a very. I don't know, it's. It's not. It's probably a straightforward worded question, but extremely complicated. As you were saying, Mike, it's, um. It's pretty complex how people view news. But why do Americans consume news?

C (5:42)

Because they can't avoid it. I mean, honestly, you know, it sounds. It sounds, you know, I'm half kidding, but for a lot of people, I think that is the answer. I mean, you know, there are so many people in this age of smartphones who feel like they're worn out by the constant flow of news, you know, who sort of think of news in negative terms, at least emotionally. Right. Like, I mean, there's. There's war, there's natural disasters, there's sad things happening that are often in the news, you know, and so, you know, a lot of people feel like they can't avoid it. So that. That certainly is. Is part of it. You know, that's not the whole story, of course. I mean, you know, we. There are a lot of positive reasons people get news as well. I think one. One thing we wanted to sort of get to the bottom of this question. In one of our recent studies, we asked, you know, do you mainly get news because you enjoy it, or do you mainly get news because you feel like you should? Not that many people say that they only get news because they feel like they enjoy it. Right. That number is only like 9%, right. So it's like, that's not the main reason for most people, you know, about a quarter say I. I just do it because I feel like I should. You know, they feel like some sense of obligation to be informed or they feel like they, you know, they need to know what's going on. But like, half of Americans said it's like a combination of those two things, right? So it's. It's. I think I've heard, you know, in the past, people say it's like eating your vegetables, right? Like, know, turn on Netflix and streaming your favorite shows. Dessert. I like that. Following the news is kind of like. Like vegetables. People. People, you know, there. There are some tasty vegetables. It's good for you, but not eating

A (7:08)

them all the time.

C (7:08)

There are a number of specific things that people, you know, say they get out of news that are, you know, reasons why they're doing. Obviously, just feeling informed about what's going on. And I think that's been part of the human experience for a long time. Right?

A (7:18)

Yeah, but I think there's. There's something about that which can feel enjoyable. Like, I don't. It's hard. It's hard to, you know, kind of compare consuming the news to Netflix, the enjoyment you get from one versus the other. But I think the idea, like, people. I do think people, whether it's subconsciously or not, enjoy being informed. And they enjoy discussing events as long as it's civil and, you know, and they're not screaming at each other. So I think that the reasons that you had or you found in this research, why are they consuming news? To feel informed, to discuss events, and then it was vote. To make voting decisions as well. I think that is. It does feel more enjoyable when you're informed on issues.

C (7:58)

Totally. And, yeah, I was gonna. I was gonna mention those other things. I mean, we asked people in another study, like, what are the main emotions you feel when you're. When you're getting news? Right. And. And so informed, it's not really an emotion, but, like, it's a feeling, you know, And. And that was kind of the one really positive thing that rose to the top, followed by a list of more negative things. You know, angry, sad, scared, confused. Like, a lot of those things come up too. But the. The feeling of, you know, being informed sort of rose to the top. And then, yeah, like you said, you know, discussing current events with other people. News is a big way that people, you know, are able to connect with, with their neighbors, with their friends, with their family and talk about what's going on. So that's a really, really, you know, big thing that people mentioned. And then. Yeah, making voting decisions. Right. Like, this is like, the core of, like, the idea behind democracy. Right. An informed voter is. Is making a choice in an election. And so it's all connected there. And that's. That's a big reason people are doing it.

B (8:48)

Yeah. Yeah. What jumped out at me from some of this research was that the older the response, you know, Americans and the respondents in the survey got, the more they felt obligated or at least answered in that way that they follow the news and should follow the news. So I think that's really interesting. As you get older in life, you're. It's so much more important.

C (9:10)

It's a common topic of conversation is. All right, we see these differences by age. Is this a life cycle effect? Like, is this, like, when the young people get older, are they going to be more like the older people? Or is it like actually generational change where, you know, when the, when the people are in their 20s today are in their 60s, like, they're actually not going to be like the people who are in their 60s now? Like, maybe. I mean, we can't answer that. Of course, we have to wait and look at the data over the, over the coming decades.

A (9:32)

But you show that, though. I like the research you have because you don't just show a snapshot in time today. You show what did people in their 20s 10 years ago say versus people in their 20s today.

C (9:41)

Yeah.

A (9:42)

So you can see those changes is fascinating.

C (9:44)

We often say, you know, we wish we had data from 1965 to be like, what are the people who are, you know, older now? What were they like in their 20? We don't go back that far. So unfortunately, there are some, there's some Gallup data. Gallup has some really long trends on some. Some of these questions. So it is helpful.

A (10:00)

But yeah, we're talking about voting and how news helps informs people about making voting decisions. What's interesting is another chart you have in one of your reports which looks at people's sense of, I guess, civic duty, being a good member of society and following the news. It had, you know, a decent amount of people saying that it was very or extremely important about over 40. But voting and elections, paying taxes, respecting the opinions and beliefs of, of others you disagree with, serving jury duty, volunteer, all those things were, were above the news, which I thought was quite interesting. So it's important, but it's not that. What people see as the number one civic duty.

C (10:42)

Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, we, we really wanted to do this. We wanted to put it on that list and be like, oh, where does this rank for people? Because I think a lot of people, certainly if you're in the news industry, you know, there's a big sense of importance and people feel really strongly about the role that journalism does play in our democracy and the role that information does play. But yeah, when you put it on that list with some of that other stuff, it definitely doesn't rise to the top. I mean, it's still most people saying that, you know, it's at least somewhat important. Right?

A (11:05)

Yes, yes.

C (11:06)

Not that everyone's saying this isn't important at all, but if you just are looking at the percentage of Americans who say this is like, extremely important, very important, you know, it's a little bit below half that. Say that. That's the case for, you know, following the news. Yeah. And you get big majorities saying that, you know, of course, those are the things you mentioned. Voting, jury duty, paying taxes, you know, those things are.

A (11:28)

And it was higher than going to protests or rallies as well. So it's. Yeah, it is. It is still incredibly significant for folks in terms of being a good member of society. Where. Mike, Mike, where are people saying that they get the news from? And how's that changed?

C (11:44)

Yeah, a lot of different places. Right. I mean, that's the big, biggest story probably in news consumption over the last, you know, the Internet era, I guess I'd say is. Is just a lot of people talk about the fracturing of the information ecosystem. Right. There's just. There used to be a more limited number of potential news sources out there. Your local newspaper, you know, cable news. You know, if you go back before the 80s, there was no even cable TV news. It was just kind of the big networks, maybe a radio station. As the Internet has grown and evolved and there's just been so many more different media popping up now. People are getting their news in so many different places. And now, of course, AI now is becoming a source of news for some people. That's kind of like the newest thing that we're looking at. So, yeah, there's still plenty of people, especially older folks, getting news from more traditional platforms. Radio, tv, print TV being kind of the biggest of those still. But then when you look at younger folks, it's much different. It's all digital. It's social media is huge source of news for the younger generation. Podcasts, of course, increasingly become a source of news for folks, especially in the last 10 years or so. Email newsletters are another one that's popped up for a decent segment of society. Search. A lot of people are just like, they hear something and they just go to Google to find out more and who knows what. And now it's probably a lot of times taking them to an AI summary of whatever topic they've plugged in there. So, so, and then of course, within some of these, you know, there are so many podcasts, there are so many social media feeds. Within each of these broader platforms, there's like so many different areas that, that people could. Could be so many different specific sources that people could be hearing From. So it's hard to make sense. It's dizzying really. I mean, it's so many different.

A (13:26)

If you asked 100 people what their news media diet looks like, it just, it would. They would all. You'd have 101 different combinations.

C (13:34)

Yeah. And I mean, even the biggest specific news sources, you know, when we're talking about like actual traditional news outlets, you know, even the biggest are only regularly used by like. No, there's no source that like more than half of Americans are saying, I go to that for news regularly. Right. Like the biggest ones, which are still like the biggest TV networks, abc, cbs, NBC, as well as like Fox News and cnn, those are kind of like the ones where the highest share of Americans say that they're regularly getting news from those sources. Even those are not, not, you know, more than half the population.

A (14:02)

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, Jenny. It's essentially there are people again, news from so many different places. And we've got the traditional tv, radio, print, then we've got digital, which I was looking over 85% according to your research, Mike, over 85% of 18 to 65 year olds, which is a big swath of the population, get their news online now. So it's no longer like younger. No, it's. It's basically everybody. But then you drill down, as Mike's saying, Jenny, into kind of how people are getting news digitally. And there's a lot of differences there, particularly generation. Generationally. What stands out to you about how Americans get their news?

B (14:40)

Yeah, sorry.

A (14:41)

Where they're getting their news.

B (14:42)

Yeah, I think it correlates to where they're spending their time. So younger audiences are definitely spending more time on digital marketer forecasts and tracks media that the general population spending time, traditional TV still, still at the top. But that's because we have an older cohort who's bringing up that number over two hours a day. But then our digital numbers an hour and a half, but for younger audiences, two plus three hours daily on social media. And I think that where they're at is where they're consuming their news. Where they're spending their time is where they're consuming their news. I looked up some older Pew data that we had cited and that I, I think it's so interesting that 10, 15 years ago, younger audiences were getting their news on the Internet that is kind of trans transformed to social now. So it was Internet TV and you know, Internet was young and TV was older audiences. And now where social media is where young folks are and older Audiences are a mix of TV and, and digital Internet.

C (15:52)

Yeah. And that totally tracks with what, what we find. You know, I mean, I, I don't want to list a bunch of numbers here because that can put people to sleep. But like, just to throw like one of the starkest things we see. So you look by age at the percentage of adults who get their news, who get, you know, news often or sometimes is the way we frame it in this question. You know, from social media, it's 76% of the youngest adults, so that's 18 to 29 year olds, 76% are getting news on social media. If you look at the oldest group, 65 plus, that's only 28%. So we're talking about like almost a 50 point gap on that measure. And you know, that's really the one place, I mean podcasts are another one, younger people. Not nearly the same extent of a split, but younger people are more likely than older people to get, get news on podcasts. But on most of the other, you know, things that we're measuring, older people are, are more likely. But with social media it's the complete opposite. It's just a complete, you know, huge split. The, the specific spaces where we really see the big age grab, age gaps are Instagram and TikTok. You know, I mean Facebook we know, I think is the users. Facebooks are trending a little bit older lately. It's not as popular with some of younger folks as it was, you know, a while back. You know, X is a little bit more of a, of a mix as well. But, but Instagram, TikTok are like, those are really young, young folks getting news there and not a lot of older

A (17:10)

folks in those spaces getting that gap between older folks, younger folks getting news from social media versus older folks is almost a complete inverse when you look at getting news on tv.

C (17:19)

Yep, right.

A (17:20)

It's a similar chasm. That's exactly right between, between the two groups. I want to really quickly before we move on to something you said, you mentioned, AI chat bots and how people, how, how much are people getting news from them?

C (17:35)

So it's not a huge percentage of the population yet that's saying that they're regularly getting news from, from chat bots. I believe it's like around 10% who say that they're like often or sometimes getting news from chat bots at this point. But we know that this is sort of increasingly, you know, feels so rapid right at how, how much these things are growing in influence and you know, picking up users. So we wanted to sort of start tracking that early. We're also looking at, you know, AI summaries in search. Right. That's something. It's actually on the agenda for us to look at more this year because that's been this thing that has popped up and it's gotten a lot of attention. And I know online publishers are very interested because there's been a lot of talk about, you know, traffic, search traffic, everything like that. So we know that AI is already having an impact on the way people consume news. It's not a huge percentage of people at this point who are sort of noticing that or deliberately seeking out news from AI sources, but it's definitely starting to play a role in the.

A (18:30)

And I guess at some point you have to start to make the distinction between if you're using AI, how are you. To what you're saying, how are you using AI? Isn't an AI overview. Are you going to a particular LLM to type in questions about the news? There are a variety of ways that you and I could help you get the news.

C (18:49)

Totally. Yep.

A (18:50)

I want to touch on something Jenny said because it's a great point, which is you're seeing a reflection how people get the news and where they're spending their time. And I noticed something, or we know something in your data, Mike, when we were talking about this episode, which is that news is no longer about just going to find it. Yeah, A lot of the time it's, I'm there already and it hit me in the face whilst I was consuming something else. Talk to us a bit about how people's relationship with news has changed in terms of this kind of not push, pull, but whether they're kind of the relationship between them going to. To get it and it just happens to conveniently be there when they're trying to look at something else.

C (19:38)

No, that absolutely is a perfect connection between what we were talking about. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's like this is a trend that we've really been focused on a lot lately because it's such a change. I mean, we've seen the change over the last several years in that an increasing number of people are saying, you know, we asked this question, it's kind of just like forced choice. You got to choose one side or the other. Do you usually get news because you're looking for it or do you usually get news because you happen to come across it as the way we word it? But we really talk about these. These folks is like passive news consumers. Incidental news consumption you can come up

A (20:09)

with whatever way to describe intentionality about. I think the one that was used is intention.

C (20:13)

Exactly. So. So we've seen the number growing. It's now about half and half of Americans, so who get news each way.

A (20:19)

Wow.

C (20:19)

We've seen the number growing of the percentage who say that they are just news is finding them. They're not looking for it, you know, news is finding them. And I think, you know, like, you think about it, think about, you know, put yourself in the shoes of someone, you know, in the 80s or whatever. Like if you want to get news, you had to turn on the tv, right? You had to open the newspaper or turn on the radio. I mean you might hear things through word of mouth just in like social conversations. But otherwise if you wanted news, you had to, you had to take the action to get it right. It wasn't just gonna find you. But now you got your smartphone in your pocket and it's buzzing, you know, however many hundreds of times per day. And you know, I think that a lot of people have made that calculation that you know what like a, we were talking about some of the negative emotions before. A lot of people are worn out. They're like, I'm, I don't want to act, you know, I'm not opting if something's important, like it's gonna find me, right? I'm gon hear about it, you know, so that's, that's good enough for a lot of people. And I think that's, that's how a lot of people do, do sort of approach their, their news consumption at this point. And, and that, you know, there's within this world of like incidental news consumption, there's a number of ways it could go. Like some people do sort of deliberately set up alerts or newsletters or whatever things that they aren't having to go find that are, they're finding them, but they have sort of made a choice at some point to set up that, that flow in their direction. Whereas I think for other people, yeah, it's probably more random. It's probably just whatever they have to say, whatever pops up in the algorithm, you know, so it really depends. But this is another one where you know, there's huge age differences. Right? Like younger people are way more likely to say that was they're just happening, the news is finding them. And older people are much more likely to say that they seek it out.

A (21:50)

Yeah, a similar sized gap, 22% of young people, basically people in their 20s intentionally seek out news versus 70, close to 70% of older Americans doing so. A huge Grand Canyon between those two groups as well. Jenny, what do you make of this shift?

B (22:05)

I thought it was so interesting, the question from the December survey that do you follow news closely? Very closely, and not so many. But then in the past 10 years, do you think the amount of news Americans consume has been rising, staying the Same or falling? 50% say rising. And so there's this disconnect between those who very closely follow the news. But then this perception that we're following, it's rising where there's just news everywhere. And it's such an interesting.

A (22:37)

Almost like this passive. Yeah, this passive. This new era of passive consumption to kind of what Mike's talking about. And Jenny, the. The kind of not power, almost cognitive dissonance maybe. I don't know, this paradox that is going on.

C (22:50)

Yeah, no, that's a great observation, Jenny. I mean, that's like, you know, I think a lot of people have made those deliberate choices, right. To sort of limit. They feel like there's so much out there. They've made those deliberate choices to sort of limit their news consumption in certain ways because there's just so much of it out there. And so. Yeah, you're right. We have seen this number coming down just in the share who say that they follow the news very closely. We've seen it come down quite a bit over the last 10 years, which does sort of indicate. Now, does that mean that Americans are getting less news? I don't know. It just means that people are again, not doing it as actively, not intentionally seeking it out in quite the same way. Because that has the word follow in that question. Right.

A (23:28)

Do you. You follow the news?

C (23:29)

So a lot of people might look at it as well, no, I'm not following it. It's following me. Right. Kind of thing. Yeah. Where. So. So that's, I think, part of the dissonance there. And then you're right. Many more people say, when they have to. We asked this general read about, like society as a whole, many more people saying that news consumption is rising as opposed to falling. And I think, you know, it's hard to explain exactly why that is. I think people sort of feel the vibes out there in this, you know, frenetic news cycle news environment. They just feel like, all right, there's so much more news out there these days and it's happening so much faster. People must be getting more of it. That's that. If I had to sort of guess how people are thinking through that one, but you're right. It's a very interesting paradox there.

A (24:09)

Yeah. You can feel like. Sorry, please, Jenny.

B (24:11)

Oh, I was just curious about how you think trust factors in. We've seen some other research. We have this, we follow Edelman Trust Barometer and a few other sources, and that has gone. Trust in industry, trust in certain organizations has, has gone down noticeably, especially over time in surveys. So I'm curious how you think that's affecting some of the current news consumption.

C (24:37)

Yeah, it definitely plays a role. I mean, I think it's all connected. It's definitely. Yeah, it's been a bleak story in terms of trust over time in the last decade or more. If you're, if you're a journalist or if you're in the news industry, you know, it's definitely not been numbers that people have been happy to see. Right. I mean, that number, percentage of Americans in our data who say that they have at least some trust in the information that comes from national news organizations is one way we ask it. It's gone down by like 20 points in the last 10 years. And we ask another question, you know, how much confidence do you have? This question we've asked for a long time. How much confidence do you have in journalists to act in the best interest of the public? And that's fewer than half. I think it's like 43% now. So you have a majority of people saying that they basically don't have confidence in journalists to act in the best interest of the public. So, you know, a lot of this political right, like there's huge, huge party gaps have opened up on this. You know, Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to have confidence, have trust in, in the media in general. I think, you know, younger people are also less trusting of, of these institutions. And, and it's not just the news industry like, it's institutions broadly. This is something we've noticed across the whole Pew Research Center. A lot of traditional institutions are getting regarded with more, more skepticism by younger generations, you know, than, than their, you know, older peers. So it's, it's definitely something that is, you know, has a lot of people concerned, has a lot of people talking about how, you know, is this, is this a problem for society? And it's not like, you know, young people are, are like we were talking about social media, right? Like young people are getting news on social media. It's not like they're trusting everything they see there either. Right. Like there's, there's plenty to be skeptical of in that space. And, but we do see, like, if you look at that youngest cohort, 18 to 29, pretty much the same. That's about half say that they have some or a lot of trust in news from national news organizations. Almost exactly the same for social media. So they're kind of looking at things with the same skeptical eye across the

A (26:27)

board, but they're trying to do something about it. Right. I was asking you about, of all the things we're going to be talking about today, Mike, what is the kind of an under the radar finding from your research and you were saying about the level of accuracy from the news and the response from folks in terms of trying to tackle that problem?

C (26:49)

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, we've noticed this for a long time. Like people are feeling like they're seeing a lot of inaccurate news. Right. I mean, anyone who goes to the Internet now, you know, if you put it politely, like there is a wide variance in quality of the information that you can find in social media and just on the Internet in general. Right. And so, so, you know, people used to maybe have a little more. They had these trusted messengers, they had these news brands that they were, you know, that they would put their faith in and that would be the information that they would get and they would trust it. Now, you know, given that the trust has fallen in traditional journalists and given that a lot of people are in these spaces online, right. Like people have a whole extra job of trying to sort through what's true and what's not and what's, what's legitimate and what's not. And, and so, yeah, in our work, we've seen a huge. Everyone agrees, right. That like Americans have a responsibility to do this now, that this is something that needs to happen. People need to be verifying the accuracy of the information that they're getting. Like, that's just across the political spectrum, across the ages, like, everyone agrees that this is an important thing now, but

A (27:48)

you have 65% of Americans, you show think it's very. Or extreme.

C (27:53)

Yes. And then if you throw in the somewhat, it's like almost everybody.

A (27:56)

Yes.

C (27:56)

And so, and so. So, you know, it is definitely something that people are recognizing as an important thing these days. But where you get into some of the problems with it is that, you know, people, people tend to have confidence in themselves to do it. Right. Most people saying they're at least somewhat confident in, in their, that they would know what to do to check the accuracy of a news story. But when we ask them, all right, well, how much confidence do you have in other people? It's like very few. It's like, yeah, only 3% say that they're, you know, very. Wow. It's like 25 say they're at least somewhat confident, but a majority say they have no confidence, little to no confidence in other people. So there's this sort of. People do not have a lot of faith in their fellow Americans to be able to, to navigate this news environment and be able to, you know, distinguish truth from fiction. So.

A (28:41)

Yeah.

C (28:42)

And yet, you know, we asked this other question, like, all right, well, who should be responsible? Who should be responsible for making sure that Americans know how to, how to, you know, determine what's true and what's not? There's no easy answer there either. I mean, the most common answer is like, people say individuals themselves. So while they're, they're saying that they don't have a lot of confidence in folks to do this, they're also saying that it's individual's own responsibility to sort of figure it out. It's not news orgs, it's not schools. We thought maybe schools would be like, people think that, you know, media literacy should be taught in high school or something. I mean, some people certainly feel that way and some people are really trying to push for that, but that didn't get a huge number of, you know, huge support from the public in the survey. So, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a vexing problem for sure.

B (29:24)

Yeah.

A (29:25)

82% of people at least sometimes do their own research about a news story. You show, what does doing your own research mean?

C (29:34)

Yeah, that is, that's a, that's a very loaded question these days. I feel like, you know, I mean, and we tried to dig into this, right, because we, that term has been used in a lot of different ways lately, you know, and, and people do associate a lot of different things with that. I mean, for some people, doing your own research, for a lot of people, doing your own research is just, just, you know, looking at multiple sources, literally googling something, you know, for maybe the more intrepid, bold people reading scientific studies and seeing if you can, you can dive into those yourself and figure out, you know, figure out what's going on in there. But it's, you know, as someone who reads academic studies for my job a lot, it's, it's often not super easy to, to, you know, get to the, the truth in there, but, or get to just the clarity on what's going on. But a lot of, a lot of academy on any academics to get mad at me there's a lot of academics doing amazing work and it's really valuable for our field. It's just not always the most accessible for an average person to jump read

A (30:27)

a paper on every single thing you're trying to figure out.

C (30:30)

But of course, right. So then when it comes to doing your own research, you know, a lot of people also associating this term with like questioning the official narrative. The official. Whether it's from news organizations, whether it's from the government, whether it's from medical sources, you know, it's. That term has been used a lot in regards to like vaccines and, you know, public health stuff. Right. Like, people who say they're doing their own research sometimes are really mean, like in the public recognizes really mean. Just like, you know, they're questioning the official recommendations or the official story on stuff.

A (30:57)

So, yeah, some of the research you have about this showing that really high shares of people comparing information from different sources, looking at studies, scientific studies, researching something on a search engine or questioning, as you said, big organizations is like over 70% from all those categories. Discussing with friends and family, not so much. That one was a lot lower. I want to circle back to or kind of close out the episode with. We were talking about basically drinking from the fire hose when it comes to consuming news for a couple of years now. I stopped for a short while, but started doing it again by the newspaper every Sunday. Just so it's a finite amount of information. I could choose the stories I want in there. There are ads, but nothing kind of popping up or autoplaying flashing at me. And I have to close a million things. And when you finish it, you have this sense of completion, you know, finality. I did it. It's done. Okay, what's next? That's one of the ways that I've changed how I receive news. Some of the research showing 6 in 10Americans reducing their overall news intake. And I thought this was a really interesting stat. The share of Americans who have stopped talking about political news, going from 45% to 56% from the pandemic to today. Mike, how are some other ways that you've seen folks change how they receive news?

C (32:27)

We've done some, some qualitative research on this, you know, focus groups and just interviews where, where folks are saying, like, I don't want to, you know, end my friendships. Right. There's such a political divide in this country. There's so much political polarization in this country that people are afraid of if they go into those conversations that it's just going to lead Nowhere good with. With folks that they want to maintain relationships with. So that. That's. That's part of it there for sure. Yeah. I mean, how we've seen people change. You said that one stat. And I think that, you know, we're really interested in trying to dig in this because I think a lot of times people go in cycles, right?

A (32:58)

They.

C (32:59)

They might be hearing a lot about a certain story and just be like, I can't handle this anymore. Like, I can't. You know, I think the pandemic was a good example for a lot of people, right? Like, you know, there was so much news about this crazy news event where literally no one had ever heard of this thing, you know, and then all of a sudden, it was dominating all of our worlds, right? And so, you know, people get burnt out on something and they try to tune it out for a bit or, or, you know, the other thing we've seen is, right, specific sources, right? People find reason to, for one reason or another, to, you know, become skeptical of a particular source, whether that was a mistake that the source made or whether that's, you know, political views evolving on one side or the other or whatever. So we, we've seen people, you know, tune out of news in general. We've seen people, you know, tune out a specific source quite a bit. Whether these things are permanent or temporary, you know, it's hard to say. Like, these things are hard to track because people's habits are changing all the time. And one of the big challenges we have in our research is, you know, people are getting so much information they can't even recall where they're hearing certain things, right? It's just. There's just so much coming at them. So survey research being our sort of main method of study. I mean, we do other stuff too, but we're relying on people's own, own, you know, experience, recounting their own experiences.

A (34:08)

So speaking of recounting their own experiences, Jenny, there was a really good quote in one of the pieces which I pulled. There was links to which I think is a really interesting trend which has been happening for a while, but will obviously start to be reflected in the numbers more in the coming years, because it's talking about younger people getting access to news earlier and earlier. And this quote from the woman in her 20s, but she was saying a large part of why I think it's rising, the consumption of news, particularly on social media, is because people are aware of it earlier. She says the kids on Tick Tock, my middle school niece, knew what was going on just as much as I did. Like, I was not paying attention to the news in middle school, but it's popping up on her feed, and so she's asking about it. And so I thought that was an interesting observation in terms of how the way people receive news is changing.

B (35:02)

Absolutely. And I thought it was interesting. The 2019 survey, it sounds like you asked the same question. Are you worn out? Are you worn out by news? 2019 to the 2025 survey. And there were almost no age differences in 2019, but pretty sizable differences in the 2025 survey. I think the pandemic, like you mentioned, Mike, might have something to do with that. The 2019 survey, obviously pre pandemic, but the younger age groups were more likely to say they were worn out. And I don't know if that correlates with the social. They're seeing it right in the moment. It's being pushed to them kind of in their face or if it's just the nature of news right now.

C (35:48)

Yeah. And I think a lot of this stuff feels heavy for young folks. Right. They're just entering the world. And when there's bad news about the economy or there's bad news about, you know, it's like, I think they probably feel more of a sense of, like, you know, insecurity in some ways. Right. And then you also just look at from the other direction. Like, older people just tend to be more interested in news, so maybe their threshold for getting burnt out is a little bit higher if they actually want this information. But it was really interesting, Marcus, what you said about the teenager. We actually did some focus groups with teens last summer, and this is an area where we're interested in exploring. And, you know, I think a lot of people have this expectation that, like, when we've talked about studying teens and like, gotten people's opinions on it, some people, including myself, sometimes have been like, teens, they're not interested in the news. Like, it's not going to be that interesting to look at because they got so much other stuff going on and you don't. You don't really see it. But nowadays, yeah, the focus groups totally kind of debunk that in my mind. Right. It's like whether or not they want it, like, they're in it. Right. It's just like everybody else. Right. Like, the news is finding them once they're getting a phone, like, it's. It's kind of, you know, and then just all the conversations that people are having, I think given all the information that's out there, in the air. It's permeating a lot of different spaces and so it's getting to people younger. I mean, my kids, I have five year old and a seven year old and like they're asking me questions about stuff they've heard at school. Obviously they don't have phones yet, but like, you know, they hear things and they're asking questions that I'm like totally not prepared to answer. Yeah, what about the war in Iran, Daddy? I'm like, how do you hear about that?

A (37:12)

You know, play school? What do you. Kindergarten. They're talking about this in the playground. Yeah, it's the window of opportunity to hear about news is just, it's always now. It will. Before it was between, you know, six to seven and the evening news or maybe you'd catch a, you know, snippets of it in the car on the radio and you definitely weren't trying to read the newspaper at that age because it was boring and whereas now it's.

C (37:38)

I was reading the sports section, just to be clear, when I was

A (37:41)

from Boston. Well, unfortunately that's all we've got time for, Mike, and we could talk to you forever. We've taken enough of your time. Thank you so, so much for, for coming on the show and we'd absolutely love to have you back. Mike, thank you so much for being here.

C (37:56)

Well, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. It was a great chat.

A (37:59)

Fantastic. Yes, it was. Jenny, thank you as always. We'll see you very, very soon.

B (38:02)

Thank you so much. So glad to be here.

A (38:04)

Yes, indeed. Thank you. Of course, to the production team. We've got John in the background today hanging out and helping us out with this one. So thank you so much to him. Thanks to everyone for listening to behind the Limousine Marketer podcast made possible by rokt. You can tune in Wednesday if you want. No pressure. It's up to you. Reimagine retail show hosted by Suzy. She'll be talking to sky and Karina all about the three consumers retailers need to think about. Spoiler alert. One of them is a robot.

B (38:39)

New band name. The Somewhats. The someone that was good.

C (38:44)

We never know what to do with those somewhat. You know, it's like best survey practice now to have that middle group like we have like these methodologists and they're like. But then we, you know, it's, it's, it's almost a challenge to. Because you can either put them with the top group and it'd be like, look, everybody is at least someone. Or you can put them, you know. So, yeah, it's in the eyes for sure.

A (39:02)

They have to be former researchers, though.

B (39:04)

I was like a new research think tank called the Somewhat.

A (39:08)

That's so good. They're so good.