A NEW PIECE
Why millions of Americans avoid the news – and what it means for this year’s election The issue. According to this year’s Digital News Report, 43% of Americans avoid the news in some form and only 32% trust it most of the time. How will these figures influence this year’s election? This is the question at the heart of a new interview with Benjamin Toff, who led our own Trust in News Project and co-authored this seminal book on news avoidance. Here are three quotes from the piece: 🙈 On US news avoiders. «They are more likely to be younger and working-class and less likely to be college-educated. They are also slightly more likely to be women than men. Lack of interest in politics is a huge predictor, so people who are consuming little to no news are less interested in politics and less likely to participate in political life.» 🙉 On why they don’t trust journalism. «If you don’t consume a lot of news, the sources you are more likely to be thinking about are not investigative journalism but clickbait, sensational headlines about celebrities, local news coverage of crime, and opinions on cable news. These are the forms of news that most people have at the top of their mind, and they don’t see it as relevant to the things they care about.» 🛠️ On what can be done. «A lot of the news avoiders we interviewed who were not voting would often point to this feeling that they just didn’t think they knew enough to vote. But you do see differences by country. Places that have a lot more investment in public service media have much higher rates of engagement with news and more political engagement.» | 
