TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER 2024

Dear Felipe,
According to our own figures, millions of people in the United States haven’t consumed any news in the last month and many more avoid the news selectively, either reducing frequency or skipping stressful topics.
As someone who’s covered US politics for more than a decade, I wanted to know what these figures mean and how they might influence the upcoming election. So I spoke to my friend Benjamin Toff, who led our own Trust in News Project and is one of the authors of the best book on news avoiders. I hope our conversation will help you navigate the home stretch of the campaign and make you think about these elusive audiences, often forgotten by news organisations and media scholars.
This newsletter also includes a link to join our upcoming event on the US election, a new podcast episode on AI, a chart from our research and a call to join our next leadership programme.
Eduardo Suárez
Head of Editorial, Reuters Institute

Explore our Digital News Report 2024 here | Check out data from your country | Download a PDF version | Explore our interactive | Lee el informe en español 

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.»

🗳️ A special event. The US presidential election promises to be one of the closest on record. In this event that we are co-hosting with Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute, we will look at the fallout from the election and discuss what it could mean in the near term and for the next four years. Our panel features academics and journalists working at the very top of US politics and news:

• Jason Casellas, ABC News election decision desk

• Clare Malone, New Yorker staff writer

• Mike Murphy, Republican political strategist

• Kimberley Johnson, Professor of American Government

• Adam Smith, Professor of US Politics and Political History, and RAI Director

🧑🏽‍💻 Join us. The hybrid event takes place on Thursday 7 November, 17:00 UK / 12:00 ET at the Rothermere Ame