Indie info providers, creator-journalists, news creators … whatever you call them, they’re reshaping how communities get news. But how do they establish credibility without the institutional backing of a newsroom? It’s a question facing a growing share of people working independently — and one without easy answers.

On June 1, CNTI is partnering with News Creator Corps (NCC) for “No Newsroom, No Problem: Building Credibility on Your Own” — a conversation with four panelists working at different points of this evolving landscape:

• Rachel Lobdell, Executive Director at NCC
• Jay Barchas-Lichtenstein, Senior Research Manager at CNTI
• Phil Edwards, Independent video producer and YouTuber
• Terrill Haigler, Community activist and indie info provider, better known online as “Ya Fav Trashman”
• Moderated by Amy Mitchell, Executive Director at CNTI

Come and learn what’s working, what isn’t, and what their combined research and experience can teach us about the future of independent media.

RSVP here

The post No Newsroom, No Problem: Building Credibility on Your Own appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

Reading the findings of the report, two conclusions became apparent. First, these providers left their employers seeking independence, but then quickly rebuilt a new dependence on tech companies that might not be aligned with their goals and values. (Not all indie info providers started out in newsrooms, but they are all facing the same issues of dependence). Second, they have been tackling similar business challenges in isolation from one another, when these problems would be much more effectively solved if they joined forces.

The internet is in a period of flux for publishers. AI-generated instant answers at the top of search results mean that referrals to news websites are plummeting. Social media itself, crucial for reaching audiences, has fractured in the wake of new ownership and political headwinds. Every journalist going out on their own must rely on platforms to host, publish, and share their work — but choosing which to trust can feel like a minefield.

A Spectrum of Creator Independence

Every platform exists on a spectrum of creator independence. On one side of it, centralized services offer the promise of an easy turnkey solution. Services like Substack and Beehiiv are vertically integrated: journalist publishing workflows,  subscriber relationships, and revenue all flow through their parent company’s decisions. Beehiiv defaults to disabling open distribution channels like RSS, limiting a publication’s reach. Substack has of late prioritized “follows” over subscriptions, but only the latter can be exported by a publication if it wants to move platforms. These decisions benefit vendors over the publications and communities they serve. In some cases, there is an existing community for creators to tap into, which may constrain their platform choices; in others, creators need to bring their own audience, who then also may be locked in.

On the other side of the independence spectrum, open source platforms like Ghost and WordPress champion publisher choice. A decade ago, choosing open source meant accepting a substandard user experience, but modern platforms require no such compromises. Ghost has made hundreds of millions of dollars for publications, and WordPress powers 47% of the web. Each has its own first-class, fully-managed subscription (Ghost Pro in particular is worth taking a look at), but publishers have a choice: if you aren’t satisfied with their business model or decisions, you can easily choose another vendor and take your content and relationships with you).

Social Media’s Unequal Playing Field

The same dynamics exist for social media platforms themselves. At one end of the independence spectrum sit the traditional sites. X, formerly Twitter, has prioritized far-right content and suppressed external links, a problem now shared by TikTok. (Organizations like NPR have, quite reasonably, quit X completely.) Instagram is well-loved but doesn’t translate into real subscriptions or revenue; “link in bio” is not a sustainable strategy. Facebook has long charged for access to a publisher’s own audience.

But at the other end of the spectrum sit open source social media platforms that are significantly more promising for indie journalists. Bluesky and Mastodon have smaller user numbers overall but have more engaged user bases. Bluesky in particular routinely eclipses other networks in importance at newsrooms I’ve seen. They don’t suppress links, and users there are more likely to read journalism and pay for it.

The Case for Collaboration

Journalists shouldn’t need to have a technical background to go independent, but they do need access to technical expertise, and to begin to build their own. They also need to be able to learn from the experiences of their peers. That means building an accessible network of experts and stronger community structures for mutual support.

The same goes for other business-side functions. Indie info providers are each solving the same problems from scratch: ad sales, legal review, health insurance, accounting, taxes. Some of these can be tackled through peer learning, but there’s much to be gained by establishing more formal structures. In particular, creator cooperatives offering shared back-office functions, technical expertise, and legal resources would address these problems directly.

One interviewee put their challenges starkly: “Writing for a wealthy group of people is the only way at this point, as far as I can tell, to run a media business.” This is where collaboration, more access to experts, and more value-aligned platforms and networks can help bridge the gap. Co-operatives reduce overhead so the revenue threshold is lower; open platforms don’t suppress a provider’s work, allowing them to reach more people; and more engaged networks of communities are more likely to pay and share.

The Path Forward

There is precedent for this: the Colorado News Collaborative, for example, facilitates editorial collaboration across its home state. The Freelancers Union provides advocacy, education, and benefits to independent workers who would otherwise have to go it alone. In contrast, when Beehiiv offers health insurance stipends and Substack offers legal support, they’re filling real needs — but tying essential worker protections to platform choice recreates the institutional dependence these creators left newsrooms to escape.

Independence that depends on a platform’s continued goodwill isn’t independence at all. The individuals in this report already know that instinctively. They need the tools, the structures, and the funding to act on it.

Ben Werdmuller is Senior Director of Technology at ProPublica. He sits on the boards of A New Social and Tiny News Collective, and writes about pro-social technology at werd.io. Guest essays reflect the views of their authors, not CNTI. We welcome perspectives from across the field. If you’re interested in contributing, reach out at info@cnti.org.

The post What Independence Really Means for Indie Journalists appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

In India, that playbook lands differently. With 886 million internet users, a media industry worth over 29 billion dollars, and more daily newspapers than almost any country on earth, India looks like fertile ground for reader-funded journalism. But out of those 886 million users, roughly 1.5 million pay for any form of digital news. That is less than 0.2 percent.

This is not a failure of journalism. It is a consequence of a system built, over decades, around a very different set of assumptions about who pays and why. Understanding those assumptions is not just useful for India. It is a window into a problem that many journalism markets are quietly heading toward, regardless of where they are starting from.

_{Sources: FICCI-EY 2024, EY Media Report 2023, CASI/Barkha Dutt analysis, Reporters Without Borders 2024}

The System That Built Itself Around Advertising

India’s news industry was never designed for reader revenue. For most of the post-independence era, newspaper subscription prices were kept deliberately low, sometimes below the cost of production, to maximise circulation and therefore advertising rates. The logic was straightforward: reach as many readers as possible, then sell that reach to advertisers. The reader was never the customer. The reader was the product.

That model worked, in a fashion, for decades. But it created a structural dependency that is now deeply embedded. Today, most Indian news organisations generate close to 90 percent of their revenue from advertising. Corporate advertisers provide the bulk of it. Government advertising provides a significant share on top of that. According to an analysis presented at the Center for Advanced Study of India, the Indian government spent close to one billion dollars on media advertising across print, television and digital platforms in just the last three years. Remove that government spending, and a significant portion of India’s smaller regional news outlets would not survive.

The implications for editorial independence are real and well-documented. When government advertising is a newsroom’s primary lifeline, the incentive to hold that government accountable is structurally compromised. This is not a new observation, but it bears repeating in the context of business models: the problem of press freedom in India and the problem of sustainable local news are not separate issues. They are the same issue, expressed differently.

What Actually Pays for Indian News Today

The revenue picture varies significantly by outlet type, but the pattern is consistent: advertising dominates, reader revenue is minimal, and the gap between large national outlets and regional ones is wide.

_{Estimated revenue share by outlet type. Sources: FICCI-EY 2024, RSF India 2024, CASI analysis, industry reporting}

Large English-language outlets have the most diversified revenue, with some meaningful reader revenue and events income supplementing advertising. Hindi-language outlets remain heavily advertising-dependent, with government advertising playing a particularly significant role. Regional language outlets are the most exposed: high government advertising dependence, minimal reader revenue, and the fewest alternative options. Digital-first independents are the outliers, with some having built meaningful reader bases through memberships and donations. But they remain small, and their model has not yet scaled.

The Subscription Gap

Set India’s situation against the global picture and the scale of the gap becomes clear.

_{Source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024. India estimate based on EY 2023 data
(1.5M paid subscribers from 886M users)}

Norway and Sweden, the markets most often held up as models, have 42 and 31 percent paying rates, respectively. The US sits at 20 percent. The global average across 20 markets is 18 percent. India is estimated at under 2 percent, and even that may be generous given that most estimates count e-paper subscribers from print households rather than genuinely new digital paying readers.

The standard explanation for this gap is price sensitivity. India is a developing market, the argument goes. People cannot afford to pay. But  Indians pay for streaming video, mobile data, WhatsApp Business subscriptions, and entertainment content at scale. The issue is that readers have never been taught to see news as something worth paying for, because the industry spent decades making it free and subsidising it through advertising.

The Habit We Never Built

Working at the intersection of journalism, technology and content in India, the pattern I keep coming back to is this. The conversation about sustainable news revenue almost always happens in English. And it almost always ends at the same place. English is where the money is. Everything else is a cost to be managed.

Even within regional journalism, there is a hierarchy. Hindi gets the most investment and the most advertiser attention because it has the largest single-language audience. Every other language sits further down. Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali: each with tens of millions of readers, each treated as a secondary market that will be prioritised eventually, once the English and Hindi products are stable.

But the deeper problem is not the language hierarchy. It is that across all of Indian journalism, readers were never asked to value journalism enough to pay for it. And because the advertising model kept the lights on, newsrooms never had to ask that question seriously. The result is that when advertising weakens, when government ad budgets shift, when platforms change their algorithms, there is no reader base to fall back on. The floor collapses.

This is where the comparison with other markets becomes genuinely instructive. The US and UK are dealing with declining advertising revenue and trying to build reader revenue models late in the game. India has not yet even started that transition in any serious way. The question is not whether India will face a local news sustainability crisis. It is whether the industry will act before that crisis arrives, or after.

What Is Actually Working

Amid the structural problems, some things are working. They are worth paying attention to, not because they are perfect, but because they point toward what is possible.

Digital-first independent outlets that have built membership models have found that readers will pay, when they believe the journalism is genuinely independent and genuinely for them. Outlets that combine free access with optional membership, are transparent about their funding, and actively communicate their editorial independence have built loyal paying audiences. These are small in absolute terms. But the conversion rates suggest the appetite exists.

Regional language content is proving its commercial value in adjacent sectors. Streaming platforms that invested in regional language content have seen strong engagement and subscription growth from Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets. Over-the-top content in regional languages accounted for 50 percent of total streaming content consumed in India by 2022, according to PwC research. The audience for paid regional content exists. Journalism has simply not found a way to tap it yet.

Events and community models are emerging quietly. Journalism outlets that have moved beyond content to build genuine communities, through events, forums, and niche memberships, are finding revenue that advertising alone could never provide. The model is not new globally. In India, it remains largely untested at scale. That is the opportunity.

Revenue Models: What Exists, What Is Emerging, What Is Missing

_{Based on FICCI-EY 2024, EY Media Report 2023, PwC India 2024, Reuters Institute 2024, and industry analysis.}

What Other Markets Can Learn From India

The usual direction of learning runs the other way. India looks to Scandinavia for subscription models, to the US for digital innovation, to the UK for public media funding structures. That is reasonable. But there are things India’s situation reveals that other markets should pay attention to.

First: advertising dependency is a slow poison, not a sudden collapse. India’s crisis has been building for decades. The habit of making news free and funding it through advertising created a reader base that sees no reason to pay, and an advertising market that can hold journalism to account in ways that have nothing to do with editorial quality. Markets that are still advertising-dependent, including many local and regional outlets in the US and Europe, should read India as a preview of where that road leads.

Second: language is a business model question, not just an editorial one. The markets with the strongest reader revenue tend to be linguistically specific: Norwegian papers serving Norwegian readers, Finnish outlets serving Finnish readers. The intimacy of language creates the trust that makes people pay. Outlets that speak to readers in their own language, on their own terms, about their own communities, have a structural advantage in building paying audiences. That lesson travels.

Third: the path to reader revenue runs through habit, not price. India is not a poor market in the way the affordability argument implies. It is a market where the habit of paying for news was never built. Building that habit requires patience, consistency, and genuine editorial independence. It cannot be rushed by a paywall alone. Markets that are trying to pivot quickly from advertising to subscriptions are discovering the same thing.

Closing

India’s local news problem is not unique. It is the global local news problem at a scale and speed that makes the dynamics visible earlier and more sharply than elsewhere. The advertising model is weakening. Subscription habits have not been built. Government dependency creates editorial risk. Regional and vernacular journalism is structurally underinvested.

The question is not whether this will resolve itself. It will not. The question is whether the journalism and policy community acts on what India’s situation already makes plain, before other markets arrive at the same place with fewer options left.

Rudra Kasturi is a founder, investor, and strategy advisor who has worked across India’s largest media and technology companies, and who currently coaches CEOs and leadership teams, teaches AI, and helps companies scale in growing markets.

The post Who Pays for Local News in India appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

AI chatbots — such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Google AI Mode or the Washington Post’s “Ask the Post AI” — are software products which simulate human-like conversations and generate responses across a wide range of topics. While even their creators caution against using them as arbiters of fact, research consistently demonstrates that people increasingly rely on them for information about the world. Since the line between “information” and “news” is hardly clear-cut and information-seeking is also likely to include many topics where users of AI chatbots might previously have turned to news sources, news providers need an understanding of those broader informational habits.

This report provides a detailed snapshot of relatively early adopters and their use of AI chatbots to get information, including news. In October 2025, CNTI interviewed 53 people in India and the U.S. who use AI chatbots at least once a week and said they “keep informed about issues and events of the day” at least “somewhat closely.” 

Top-level findings:

CNTI found that most AI chatbot users currently use them to supplement their existing information repertoires, not to replace them entirely. They toggle back and forth between AI chatbots, news sites, search engines, official sources and more. We saw:

• Actionable information: Interviewees use AI chatbots to act on what’s happening and understand it, more than simply to know about it or to feel something about it.
• Personalization: AI chatbot users see these tools as fast, easy, personalized, customizable and friendly ways of getting information.
• Low understanding but higher trust: Few AI chatbot users have deep knowledge about the processes behind either journalism or AI chatbots. At the same time, interviewees express a general trust of AI chatbots alongside a general distrust of news media (outside of some users’ trust in their specific sources).

More specifically:

Interviewees use AI chatbots to act on what’s happening and to understand it, more than simply to know about it or to feel something about it.

What most drives AI chatbot use is the desire for information that helps people act. This is the most common use case for AI chatbots in both countries. Few interviewees want information for its own sake. Instead, they are looking to inform their choices and actions. AI chatbots stand out, especially in the U.S., for proactively helping people meet the need to act.

When it comes to knowledge for knowledge’s sake, interviewees in both countries use AI chatbots to supplement existing news habits, not replace them. No interviewee in either country said they rely solely on AI chatbots when they want to know what is happening. They do turn specifically to AI chatbots to learn what’s new about a story they are familiar with or to check a story that they don’t think is accurate (the latter now offered on some social media platforms, such as @grok on Twitter or Meta AI on Facebook).

Both U.S. and Indian AI chatbot users turn to them for context that is often absent in traditional news media. Many interviewees said that news stories often start in the middle, with background information buried or difficult to find. They find AI chatbots helpful for understanding who a public figure is, how another country’s legal system works and the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations — all contexts that news stories sometimes take for granted.

Emotional stimulation and entertainment are low information priorities. The “need to feel” does not seem to be a focus for our interviewees in either country, and did not come up much in our conversations. Interviewees do engage emotionally with AI chatbots, but only rarely with the information itself.

Interviewees see AI chatbots as a fast, easy, personalized, customizable and friendly way of getting information.

Few interviewees have deep knowledge about the processes behind either journalism or AI chatbots. At the same time, they expressed generally positive attitudes towards AI chatbots alongside generally negative ones towards news media.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Amy Mitchell for ongoing intellectual mentorship, partnership and leadership; Nupur Chowdhury, Rahul Dass, Kyong Mazzaro, Amy Mitchell and Nikita Roy for their thoughtful feedback on this report; Jonathon Berlin and Kurt Cunningham for web and graphic design; Angelica Ruzanova for support with transcription and data processing; and Greta Alquist for editing this report.

Continue reading

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Newsgeist is an unconference: the agenda is not pre-planned. On the first night, the participants shared session ideas — ranging from journalistic neutrality in wartime to what journalism can learn from K-Pop to investigative journalism with TikTok DNA — which were then organized into an always adaptable mix of choices. Newsgeist operated under the Chatham House Rule. There were no “speakers,” only session moderators to help manage the flow of conversations.

The takeaways below don’t represent the full range of everything discussed at Newsgeist, nor do they suggest a consensus among participants; instead, we’ve identified broad themes that arose across the weekend.

Innovation in Journalism

Over the weekend, a recurring theme was the need to push the industry’s thinking around new approaches and products for public relevance and business success. Many participants also shared in the acknowledgement that journalism has not historically taken well to adaptation and technological ideation. It will take real effort for the industry to become more innovative — and it may require traditional newsrooms to adopt some characteristics that are more natural to newer, creator-type journalists.

Several participants remarked that the news industry can learn from the technology industry when it comes to rapid experimentation, shared learning, mentorship and data testing — skills that “traditional” journalism is not known for but that can help foster new voices and approaches that better serve today’s consumers.

The news industry can also better adopt and internalize new technology to enhance and empower the work of journalists in ways not before possible. This may be even more pertinent in the age of AI: “In the age of advertisements, the metric of value exchange was the impression. In the era of traffic, the metric of value exchange was the click. In the era of generative AI, the metric of value exchange is the fact,” one participant said. Participants did not agree on the extent to which the news industry should use AI, noting that the industry needs to better understand both the value and limitations of AI and other emerging technologies in order to be more strategic, and less reactive, to innovation. There was agreement, however, that journalism must act and figure out how to be part of the change.

Other innovative ideas focused on things that bring communities together, such as ways to crowd-source local needs, needs-based audience surveys and more. And some wondered whether we need to rethink the structure of journalism itself, asking “How do we support journalists who operate outside any kind of institution?”

Journalistic Independence and Safety

Journalists are facing increased threats around the world — and newly so in the United States — including deportation, violence, government-imposed restrictions and harassment from people in power, bringing journalistic freedom and safety top of mind for many participants. Several participants emphasized that these threats are not a future issue; they are happening now, and journalists need to be prepared to respond.

The group shared many ideas for ways to respond, such as maintaining decentralized networks to protect journalists, sources and content; creating more solidarity and public awareness around journalism’s work; building relationships throughout a community in order to reach all members when reporting on threats to health and safety, such as pandemics; emphasizing journalism’s role as giving a voice to the voiceless; and consistently covering attacks on free expression and press freedom. Several people also made the point that journalists in the United States have much to learn from journalists in other countries who have or are currently experiencing threats against press freedom.

We were also reminded that media independence goes beyond independence from government interference and control. Participants shared instances where ownership structures and funding reliance hampered journalistic independence — highlighting the need for journalism producers to build strategies for self-sustainability.

Trust, Truth and Activating the Audience

Newsgeist featured powerful discussions around truth and facts, what they each mean and how they fit together with trust. Information is always filtered through personal experience; what feels true to one person may not feel true for someone else. As one participant said, “We need to ask ourselves who we’re willing to hear the truth from, and who our audience is willing to hear it from, and why.”

Questions about trust and truth came up across our sessions:

• Can a slate of more diverse viewpoints lead to greater trust in news organizations? What does doing that authentically require?
• Did Jimmy Kimmel’s experience show that the public will activate when corporations or the government attempt to censor or ban content?
• How do journalists demonstrate that they can respect their audiences who might be skeptical or negative towards them? How best to hear and engage with those communities?
• Is it possible for corporate owners and publishers to support their newsrooms in disputes over editorial control?
• How can news organizations do a better job of supporting one another when one among them is treated unfairly?

Participants broadly agreed that reporting the truth is the answer to regaining public trust — but as one person noted, “Truth by itself is not a culture. If we want to create kinder communities, how would we report differently?” This openness to rethinking how the audience receives information will be key to rebuilding trust, but it will require a rethinking of how journalism is practiced.

Articulating Journalism’s Value

Does journalism need a marketing campaign? A theme across several sessions was the need to do a better job of articulating journalism’s value, but to be able to do that, journalists need to first articulate for themselves what that value is and how it is changing. This is not a new problem, as CNTI’s research has shown, but it has become even more urgent today.

While the general consensus was that journalism should still mean verifiable, fact-based reporting, participants acknowledged that such journalism is now happening across a variety of platforms and from a larger number of players than ever before. As one participant put it, “Journalism with a capital J isn’t intrinsically important anymore,” explaining that a small number of traditional outlets that were seen as authoritative sources are no longer the only way people get news. Instead, many people are turning to non-traditional outlets and news producers with a specialized focus or who target local and underserved audiences. In this changing environment, journalism’s value must go beyond just updating audiences, several participants said; news practitioners must be able to demonstrate how journalism is helping news consumers live their daily lives.

Some participants also argued that rather than try to prevent people from going to social media, individual brands or AI to get informed, journalists could instead explore what makes these tools attractive, valued choices: What role do these tools serve, and what can journalism producers learn from that? The public will continue to turn to a mix of tools and sources for their information, and, in many cases, they will prioritize sources that give them some kind of shared experience instead of a top-down rendering of the day’s news.

CNTI gives our thanks to the financial sponsors of this Newsgeist, Google and The Knight Foundation, and to everyone who came and created such a rich 40 hours. We hope the conversations continue, both in and outside of Newsgeist.

The post CNTI Newsgeist 2025: Trust, Truth and Innovation in a Shifting Industry appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

Introduction

In late 2024, we asked the public in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and the United States for their thoughts on news, journalism and journalists. Our public survey included open-end responses which were analyzed to understand how people view journalists. These four countries were chosen to represent a diversity of both media environments and geographies.

Our analysis of their responses to open-ended questions reveals that:

• Strong majorities of the public in all four countries use favorable rather than unfavorable terms to describe traits of journalists.¹
• In multiple countries, the people who have negative views of journalists tend to also possess negative perceptions of the wider news ecosystem and/or conservative political leanings.

Across All Four Countries, Most People Name Positive Traits When Asked About Journalists — but Consistent Minorities Express Concern About Journalists’ Ethics

Around the world, the public has ambivalent views of journalism. CNTI wanted to know what they think about the people who create it. We asked respondents in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and the U.S. to share the top traits that came to mind when they thought about people who produce journalism. 

Across all four countries, strong majorities used positive words and phrases when asked to name top traits that come to mind when thinking about people who produce journalism. Many in Australia, Brazil, and the U.S. described journalists as having clear ethical standards and being committed to verifiable facts. At the same time, about one-in-ten people in these same countries indicated that journalists do not have ethical principles.

In three of the four countries studied, most people who answered the question say that journalists are ethical, rely on verifiable facts or both

In Australia (45%), Brazil (38%) and the U.S. (44%), respondents were mostly likely to list traits that indicated that journalists have clear ethical standards. Traits indicating a reliance on verifiable facts were the second most common — 23% of Australians, 22% of Brazilians and 31% of Americans mentioned it. Responses from these three countries are similar to what we heard from journalists, although journalists emphasized verifiable facts slightly more often than ethics.

The positive ethical traits most frequently mentioned by Australians, based on simple counts of individual words and word stems included “honesty,” “integrity” and the absence of “bias” (or, occasionally, “awareness” and “transparency” regarding biases). Americans used the same words — “honesty” and “integrity” — frequently to describe ethics. In Brazil, on the other hand, “impartiality” stood out as a common word. Brazilians also frequently attributed “seriousness” to journalists, although it rarely appeared in responses from any other country. (In Brazilian Portuguese, describing a person as “sério” connotes integrity and decency more than somberness or lack of humor.)

Among Brazilians and Australians, the word “truth” was a frequent indicator for relying on verifiable facts, while in the U.S. “fact” was about equally common. The language of “credibility,” “accuracy” and “reliability” came up across countries as well.

On the other hand, no single trait was mentioned by a clear plurality of South Africans. Roughly comparable numbers of people mentioned that journalists rely on verifiable facts (13%), have clear ethical standards (18%), have grit and work hard (17%), have mental acumen (21%) and communicate complicated topics clearly (16%).

Consistent minorities see journalists as lacking ethical principles

Among those who offered less positive descriptions when asked what tops their list when thinking about journalists, the most common responses had to do with a lack of ethics. About one-in-ten Australian (12%), Brazilian (12%) and U.S. (14%) respondents described journalists as unethical. In all three countries, the absence of objectivity was the most common complaint among those who said that journalists are unethical in one way or another.

In Australia, those who found journalists to be unethical frequently described them as “biased” and “opinionated,” “activists” and “liars” who have an “overarching agenda or world view that their published works are viewed through.” Brazilians who viewed journalists as unethical primarily described them as “biased” or “political,” but some also mentioned other ethical failures, such as “hypocrisy,” “lying” and “financial interests.”

Information that’s very partial; especially in this political moment; the mess the country is in; no one understands; things are too one-sided, without a filter; we’re suspicious of everything; it’s very complex; we might go crazy from here on.” (Brazil)

They should be neutral, but often sneak their slant in.” (U.S.)

I would like to think of it being ‘honesty’, but lately I believe they are more ‘dishonest’ and do not report the truth,” (US)

While infrequent, money and profit reflected another striking thread among those who were concerned about journalists’ ethics.

They make the story say what is needed for money.” (Australia)

They sell a lot of media, selling what the media wants. Not everything is apologised for and they only sell what’s interesting to them.” (Brazil)

Bigger the story. The bigger the pay.”  (U.S.)

In a similar vein, in all four countries about 5% of people said that journalists do not rely on verifiable facts. Many of these responses were also coded as “unethical.”

Journalists also name facts and ethics as their top traits — and do not have concerns about a lack of ethics

The public is largely in sync with journalists on key journalistic traits. When CNTI asked a similar question in our 2024 survey of journalists, the same two traits came to the forefront. In that survey, journalists mentioned reliance on facts (49% of surveyed journalists) and ethics (41% of surveyed journalists) with roughly equal frequency.

Journalists differed from the public in not raising concerns about a lack of ethics. The negative perceptions we heard from journalists were few and far between, and largely focused on the danger of practicing journalism today or on poor financial compensation.

Negativity About the News Ecosystem Is Linked to Negative Perceptions of Journalists. So Is Political Ideology.

A notable minority in all four countries, between 10% (South Africa) and 20% (Brazil), associated journalists with at least one negative trait. To understand what drives these negative perceptions, we analyzed their responses in connection with other survey questions. This comparison revealed a connection between those with negative perceptions of journalists and those with negative views of the broader news ecosystem and/or conservative political ideologies. 

In all four countries, respondents who indicated that mainstream news organizations² do not play a critical role in an informed society were more likely to list negative traits about journalists, compared with people who do see them playing a role. 

In three countries (Brazil, South Africa and the U.S.), people who said it is not important for them to get news from mainstream news organizations were more likely to give a negative response when asked about the traits of journalists. In Australia, responses were consistent, no matter how people answered this question.

In Australia, Brazil and the U.S., members of the public who consider themselves to be very conservative or conservative were more likely to include negative traits compared with those who consider themselves to be very liberal or liberal. These partisan or ideological differences may be linked to the global phenomenon of political attacks on journalism: In both Brazil and the U.S., conservative leaders have repeatedly made highly visible comments disparaging journalists and mainstream media in recent years. In South Africa, meanwhile, ideology did not seem to make a difference. (Nothing comparable has happened on the same scale in either Australia or South Africa.)

Majorities view journalists positively — even across ideology

When asked what traits of journalists come to mind, publics across the four countries are largely positive. Even among those who are more negative about various aspects of the information environment, clear majorities view the people who produce journalism positively. While we do find evidence of political ideology being associated with views of journalists — those who self-report having a conservative ideology are more negative than those who report being liberal — majorities of both ideological groups still provide positive traits when asked to think about journalists. Overall, people in each of the four countries view journalists positively, which provides an opportunity for the journalism industry to continue to build trust and explain the relevance of the journalistic process to the public.

For Those Who See a Difference Between Journalism and News, Journalism Builds on News

CNTI’s 2024 public survey also explored if and how people in the four countries distinguish between journalism and news. About two-thirds of Australians and Americans said they are different, as did about half of Brazilians and 40% of South Africans.

Of the people who say there is a difference between news and journalism, strong majorities in Australia (76%), Brazil (70%) and the U.S. (82%) describe journalism as going beyond news in some way. Of the people in South Africa who say there is a difference, four-in-ten (40%) also expressed this view. But there was a lot of variation about precisely what journalism adds to news. Respondents’ answers suggest that journalism is news with opinion, rigor, context, facts, storytelling and/or breadth. 

Some respondents saw journalism and news as inseparable and perceived news as the content and journalism as the professional activity. Others saw journalism and news as complementary, both meeting information needs, but through different topics or different mediums.

Their definitions of both news and journalism align closely with findings from our earlier focus groups where participants described journalism as a robust process of research and storytelling informed by ethical values and news as recent, accurate and socially relevant. The definition of news also aligns with research from the Pew Research Center, which shows that Americans view news as factual, current and “important to society.”

The public did not draw the same direct connections between journalism and civics and democracy as journalists did in CNTI’s 2024 journalist survey, but the traits they mentioned most frequently are traits that enable the civic function of journalism.

Why We Did This Study

This report is part of CNTI’s broader “Defining News Initiative” which examines questions surrounding this theme in policy, technological developments and the views of journalists, in addition to public perceptions. The data in this report explore the public’s perceptions of news, journalism and technology in four countries: Australia, Brazil, South Africa and the United States. These data were collected in parallel with a global survey of journalists.

CNTI was motivated by several overarching questions:

1. How does the public navigate new ways of being informed?
2. Where do they see journalism fitting in?
3. How can journalism do a better job of communicating its unique value?

Answers to these questions are central to better understanding the evolving information ecosystem. As CNTI learned in a series of focus groups last year in the same four countries, people are putting a lot of work into getting themselves up to speed on news. At the same time, many are actively tuning news out, expressing a sense that it is overwhelming. This research continues a series of CNTI reports that examines these ideas with a specific focus on the open-ended questions in the survey. CNTI’s first report, “What the Public Wants from Journalism in the Age of AI: A Four Country Survey,” was published earlier this year.

As with all CNTI research, this report was prepared by the research and professional staff of CNTI. This project was financially supported by CNTI’s funders. 

How We Did This Study

CNTI’s survey questionnaire was developed internally by our research team and advisors in consultation with Langer Research Associates. Focus groups were initially run in each of the four counties which informed the development of the questionnaire. In addition to references made throughout this report, themes from these focus groups may be found in a series of essays available on CNTI’s website.

In partnership with Langer Research Associates, the data were collected through different vendors in each country:

• Australian data are from an Infield International RDD CATI/cell phone sample conducted from September 4 to October 1, 2024. The total sample size was 1,000 respondents. The design effect was 1.39 with a margin of error of 3.7 points. The survey was only available in English. All interviews were conducted by telephone, and the median interview length was 18 minutes and five seconds. There were 41 interviewers used by Infield International all of whom were trained. The sample collection age categories were: 18-24, 25-34, 45-54, 55-64 and 65+.
• Brazilian data are from an Inteligência em Pesquisa e Consultoria (IPEC) RDD CATI/cell phone sample conducted from September 13 to October 3, 2024. The total sample size was 1,000 respondents. The design effect was 1.67 with a margin of error of 4.0 points. The survey was only available in Brazilian Portuguese. All interviews were conducted by telephone, and the median interview length was 16 minutes and 49 seconds. There were 76 interviewers all of whom were trained. The sample collection age categories were: 18-29, 30-44, 45-59 and 60+.
• South African data are from an Infinite Insight RDD CATI/cell phone sample conducted from September 23 to October 16, 2024. The total sample size was 1,012 respondents. The design effect was 1.48 with a margin of error of 3.7 points. The survey was available in English (n = 811), Zulu (n = 138), Sesotho (n = 24), Sepedi (n = 17), Setswana (n = 12) and Xhosa (n = 10). All interviews were conducted by telephone, and the median interview length was 19 minutes and 17 seconds. There were 47 interviewers all of whom were trained. The sample collection age categories were: 18-24, 25-34, 35-49, 50-64 and 65+.
• United States data are from Ipsos’s probability-based online KnowledgePanel® and was conducted from September 12-21, 2024. A total of 1,670 panelists were initially selected and 1,053 completed the survey. A total of 28 respondents were removed during the quality control process, yielding a final sample size of 1,025 respondents. The design effect was 1.13 with a margin of error of 3.3 points. The survey was available in English (n = 983) and Spanish (n = 42). All surveys were self-administered online, and the median interview length was 10 minutes and 23 seconds. The sample collection age categories were: 18-29, 30-44, 45-59 and 60+.

Technical reports from the survey vendors are available upon request from info@cnti.org.

How We Coded Open-Ended Questions

All respondents were asked about the traits of journalism producers: “Now thinking about people who produce journalism, what is the top trait or traits that come to mind?” We received 816 codable answers from Australia, 726 from Brazil, 606 from South Africa and 742 from the U.S.

Respondents were also asked,“Thinking about news and journalism, do you see journalism as something that is different from news?” If they responded “yes,” they were asked, “In just a few words, what is it that makes journalism different from news?” We received 603 codable answers from Australia, 467 from Brazil, 300 from South Africa and 536 from the U.S. Answers were variable in length, detail and the kind of relationship they described. 

Both open-ended questions were coded by a team of four researchers. Responses for each country were coded by a unique pair of researchers and no two researchers coded the same two countries within a given open-ended question. The two researchers who had coded related items in CNTI’s survey of journalists and developed the initial coding scheme never co-coded for this report. 

The research team followed an iterative process in which an initial subset of responses were coded to assess the codebooks (presented below) and discuss options for other categories. 

Researchers independently completed their coding although they discussed questions that arose during their analysis via online messaging. The country pairs of researchers met to discuss any coding disagreements after each researcher finished their own coding. Coders used informed judgement when assessing responses that lacked clarity. All discrepancies were resolved by discussion between the two participating coders and, where necessary, the larger group of four coders.

All results shown in the main report use the survey weights (described below). The toplines present both the weighted and unweighted frequencies. The results also only show the share of responses in a given category as part of the codable responses. In effect, the total number of responses we include in analyses are only those the research team could code.

Researcher Positionality

The four researchers who participated in the coding process are all from the U.S. While three of the four have lived outside the U.S. for extended periods of time, those experiences do not include Brazil, South Africa or Australia.

Coding the traits of journalism producers

The initial trait categories were developed in our analysis of data from journalists, then we identified additional keywords from the larger data set of the public survey responses. For the public survey responses, we also considered valence (i.e., emotional direction) since a number of responses focused on the absence of identified traits rather than their presence.

Coders analyzed each country’s responses separately before coming together to discuss any disagreements. Both researchers needed to agree on a category to finalize the coding. Coders used informed judgement when assessing responses that lacked clarity. 

The final codebook consists of nine (9) categories that capture the range of responses participants provided when contemplating the traits of journalism producers. 

Here is a list of words and attributes that fit into each category:

The results for this open-ended question are shown in the table below.

Coding the differences between journalism and news

The final codebook reflects that when drawing comparisons between news and journalism, many discussed the idea that journalism adds a quality to news. Therefore, each country was reviewed again with the inclusion of “news +” categories that reflect this idea. Updating the codebook provided for a more comprehensive understanding of the differences between journalism and news.

The final codebook has 14 categories. The first category denotes whether the response was uninformative (i.e., the concepts are the same or there is a difference but it is unspecified). The next five (5) categories assess differences between journalism and news in which the two concepts are viewed as separate/distinct. The next seven (7) categories assess the common response that journalism adds a quality to news (news +). The final category (Other) serves as a catch-all for responses that did not fit cleanly into the previous 13. 

The final codebook is presented here:

The results for this open-ended response are shown in the table below.

Coding the differences between journalism and news

After the open-ended questions were coded, we re-merged these data with the full quantitative survey data by each respondent’s unique identification number. Thus, we had a full data set of their survey responses and their open-ended responses categories. 

Each country’s data were weighted using demographic variables (i.e., age, sex, education and macroregion). While each individual country used a different age breakdown for sample collection, we opted to recode the age breakdown into the following categories: 18-29, 30-44, 45-54 and 55+. These categories were used to ensure there were at least 100 weighted respondents in each group — South Africa has a younger population, especially compared with the United States’ older population. 

We also applied the survey weights to analysis that include open-ended response categories. We include both the weighted and unweighted frequencies for the open-ended responses in the toplines. For specific questions about the sample frames, weighting procedures and/or additional survey details, please send an email to the research team at info@cnti.org.

How we tested for statistical significance

We analyzed the results using Chi-squared proportion tests to assess differences in responses between two countries. We used a standard threshold of p < 0.05 for assessing statistical significance. Differences mentioned in the report text are statistically significant.

How we addressed data quality in open-ended questions

Data quality in the open-ended responses received attention during the analysis phase of the project. CNTI worked with Langer Research Associates and country vendors to review what interviewers recorded from respondents’ open ends. Several anomalies and mistakes were found. Interviewer recordings of the open-ended responses were reviewed by the vendor and CNTI received updated data for both open-ended questions. 

Researchers left individual responses as is and coded responses using informed judgement. Some non-standard orthography and typographical errors were easily interpretable. However, others were difficult to assess and were discussed by the research team. Any responses that could not be clearly understood were treated as uncodable and removed from the data set. Responses quoted in the report have been lightly edited to conform with standard orthography and punctuation.

We also examine results by country rather than as one total, because there may be a mode effect present in the survey results. The U.S. data were collected online, whereas the other three countries’ surveys were conducted through telephone, which may yield higher levels of social desirability responses in these locales. Research shows there is known variability in survey responses across countries and cultures regarding social desirability and acquiescence which may, in part, also be shaped by survey mode.

How we protected our data

Data collection was done by the country-specific vendors listed above. The survey included individual-level information such as age, gender, race, political ideology and macro-region. Survey data supplied to CNTI from the vendors did not include names or specific locations of respondents. Each respondent received an unique identifier.

It would be very difficult, if possible at all, to identify survey respondents because CNTI did not collect personal contact information or contact respondents directly. The survey data for this project are securely stored in an encrypted folder that is only authorized to the core research team at CNTI.

Footnotes

1. Throughout this report we use the term “journalist” for clarity, although we asked about “people who produce journalism” because we were trying to better understand how people understand the meaning of this term. See our focus group report for additional details. ︎
2. Because we were trying to tease out differences between journalism and news, we avoided using those words whenever possible. In our survey questionnaire, we used the phrase “news organizations that employ reporters” as a proxy for traditional media companies to distinguish them from other kinds of content producers. ︎

The post Most People in Four Countries Describe Journalists Positively appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

CNTI’s Summary

CNTI aims to help news publishers and policymakers understand the current challenges of news relevance as a means to enabling more informed internet and media policy and a healthy information system. The importance the public places on the news media inherently impacts the digital news environment and any feasible solutions to its current challenges. Even the best internet policy cannot ensure the future of independent journalism and an open internet if the news media, at large, does not carry credibility and relevance with the audiences it strives to serve. This is particularly important when it comes to younger audiences and those in underserved communities.

The post Building News Relevance appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

CNTI’s Summary

Independent journalism is critical to functioning democracies. As the global news industry largely continues to face financial struggles, governments have responded with a range of policy initiatives to provide economic support to commercial, public and local news media. Among these, recent media bargaining legislation in Australia and Canada has become the starting point for policy debates in many parts of the world. These policy debates bring several challenges to light, including tensions between the news as a public good versus a market product, the role of public policy in compensating for market forces and the risk of increasing media dependence on, and undue influence from, governments and platforms. Policy aiming to support the economic sustainability of news media cannot be one-size-fits-all; it must be context-sensitive and protect media independence, free expression and an open internet.

The post Building News Economic Sustainability appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

When you think about the people who produce news and journalism, what comes to mind? Perhaps a reporter with a mic and camera crew, the byline on a story from your favorite news organization, an anchor on a TV set. Turns out, this image is just one among an increasing number of possibilities. 

According to a recent Center for News, Technology & Innovation (CNTI) survey of 1,025 U.S. adults conducted September 12-21, 2024,¹ close to a quarter (22%) of U.S. adults get news and information online from individual creators or influencers regularly and about half (52%) do so at least occasionally. This report focuses primarily on the 22% who do so regularly and the ways they stand apart from — and in line with — other Americans. As with all CNTI research, this report was prepared by the research and professional staff of CNTI.

U.S. adults who regularly get news and information from influencers or content creators are as, if not more, dedicated to staying informed as other Americans. In fact, they turn to organizations more than to individuals and recognize journalism as something distinct from news. Indeed, Americans who regularly get news and information online from influencers and content creators are highly engaged news consumers who — like the rest of Americans — turn to a wide range of places and people for news. Unlike other Americans, they do not prioritize getting news from professional journalists above getting informed quickly.

They tend to be more technologically active than other Americans and have a more optimistic outlook on the future of the internet. They are also more optimistic about the potential impacts of AI on both their own ability to keep informed and journalists’ ability to report. 

Other than age, there are no significant demographic differences between those who regularly consume news and information from individual content creators or influencers and other Americans. Younger people are somewhat more likely to regularly or occasionally get information from influencers or content creators, but the age differences are small. Educational backgrounds and politics are largely the same among all groups.

U.S. adults who regularly get news and information from content creators or influencers…

…are actively engaged in issues and events, and more positive than other Americans about their ability to keep up

Those who regularly get news and information from content creators or influencers are more positive than others about their own ability to keep informed. About half (54%) feel positive about this ability, outpacing the 33-39% of other groups.

…like other Americans, value the role of journalism in society, while also believing non-journalists can create it

Strong majorities of all Americans see “news organizations that employ reporters” as critical for an informed society, ranging from 73% to 85%.

While the plurality of all four groups keep informed about issues and events somewhat closely, 32% of those who regularly get news and information from content creators or influencers say they keep up very closely. That is comparable to those who never get news or information this way (27%) and more than those who occasionally or rarely do (20-21%).

Among those who regularly consume information and news from influencers or content creators, about three-quarters say that “people who are not journalists” as well as “everyday people” can produce journalism. Majorities of all Americans share these views, although they are slimmer majorities among those who never consume news and information this way. About two-thirds of those who regularly consume news and information this way view “journalism” and “news” as different, as do comparable numbers of all groups.

People who regularly or occasionally get news and information from influencers or content creators are more likely to say they look for information from individuals compared with those who rarely or never do, but at least two-thirds of all groups turn first to organizations.

…prioritize speed in getting informed comparably to hearing from professional journalists; all others say hearing from professional journalists is more important

Among six factors important to choosing how to get informed, more than one-third of those who regularly get news and information from content creators or influencers select “getting the news quickly” (48%), “being able to go more or less in-depth on a story” (42%), “getting the news from professional journalists” (41%) and “seeing news from many different sources” (39%). 

They consider timeliness (“getting the news quickly”) and the source (“getting the news from professional journalists”) as comparably important; everyone else prioritizes the source (39-52% say it’s “very important”) over speed (25-30%). The full list of items asked about is available here.

…have more technology-driven media habits than other Americans, but do not rely solely on social media

The more often people get news and information from content creators or influencers, the more likely they are to rate digital technology “very important” to their ability to get informed.²

When asked which of seven different pathways people use most often for news, those who regularly get news and information from content creators or influencers are split between social media (39%) and a specific news organization (38%). The rest of Americans turn to specific organizations more often than social media.

…are more optimistic than others about developments in technology

A majority of those who regularly get news and information from content creators or influencers think digital technology will have a positive impact on their ability to keep informed; about half or less of all other groups agree.

When compared with other groups, they are equally or more positive about AI’s long-term impact on both their ability to keep informed about issues and events and journalists’ reporting ability. 

Those who regularly get news and information from content creators or influencers are confident that the internet will remain an open place to share news, with 30% very confident, and an additional 43% somewhat confident. They are about twice as likely as others to be very confident. 

Conclusion

Those who regularly get news and information online from content creators or influencers are similar to other Americans in that they value news and journalism but they do not see journalism as the exclusive province of journalists.

They are also unique in other ways. They are the only group who does not prioritize getting the news from professional journalists over getting the news quickly. They see digital technology as very important to getting informed, more than how the rest of Americans see it. They are also more positive about developments in technology, including the future of the internet and the role of AI. That might be why they are more positive about their personal ability to keep informed.

Overall, this research points to the role that individual news creators play in many people’s information habits. For the public, more traditional providers of journalism and individual providers have already begun to come together to provide a full news experience. The way information providers may or may not collaborate and complete one another on the production side remains to be seen.

As the range of relied-upon sources for news and information continues to expand, there is a great deal more to learn about the public, news producers and the broader network of digital content (including its creation, access and sharing). CNTI looks forward to continuing to study these topics and collaborate with other researchers to better understand these areas of development in society.

About This Study

News organizations are showing signs of recognizing influencers and content creators as their colleagues. In the U.S. specifically, they were invited in to cover the Democratic National Convention this past summer and the new Trump administration has actively encouraged “podcasters and social media influencers” to apply for press credentials to cover the White House. Moreover, coverage of current conflicts — including those in Gaza and Ukraine — includes on-scene videos and updates shared by eye-witness content creators. Influencers are improving gaps in access to information in places where professional journalists are being targeted in the conflict or facing legal restrictions on reporting from war zones. CNTI is pleased to add to the expanding research in this area, including recent work from the Reuters Institute and Pew Research Center.

As with all CNTI research, this report was prepared by the research and professional staff of CNTI. This project was financially supported by CNTI’s funders. 

This report is part of CNTI’s broader “Defining News Initiative” which examines questions surrounding this theme in policy, technological developments and the views of journalists, in addition to public perceptions. The survey data in this report measure the public’s perceptions of news, journalism and technology in the United States. (Read our four-country survey report here.) These data were collected in parallel with a global survey of journalists. 

CNTI was motivated by several overarching questions:

1. How does the public navigate new ways of being informed?
2. Where do they see journalism fitting in?
3. How can journalism do a better job of communicating its unique value?

Answers to these questions are central for better understanding the evolving information ecosystem. As CNTI learned in a series of focus groups last year in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and the United States, people are putting a lot of work into getting themselves up to speed on news. At the same time, many are actively tuning news out, expressing a sense that it is overwhelming.

How We Did This

CNTI’s survey questionnaire was developed internally by our research team and advisors in consultation with Langer Research Associates. Focus groups were initially run in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and the United States which informed the development of the questionnaire. Additional details on themes from the focus groups may be found in a series of essays available on CNTI’s website.

In partnership with Langer Research Associates, the United States survey data were collected through Ipsos:

• United States data are from Ipsos’s probability-based online KnowledgePanel® and was conducted from September 12-21, 2024. A total of 1,670 panelists were initially selected and 1,053 completed the survey. A total of 28 respondents were removed during the quality control process, yielding a final sample size of 1,025 respondents. The design effect was 1.13 and a margin of error of 3.3 points. The survey was available in English (n = 983) and Spanish (n = 42). All surveys were self-administered online, and the median interview length was 10 minutes and 23 seconds. The sample collection age categories were: 18-29, 30-44, 45-59 and 60+. 

The question, “How often, if at all, do you get news and information online from individual content creators or influencers?” was only asked of the U.S. sample.

Technical reports from the survey vendors are available upon request from info@innovating.news.

How We Weighted Survey Data

The data were weighted using demographic variables (i.e., age, sex, education and macroregion). While each individual country used a different age breakdown for sample collection, we opted to recode the age breakdown into the following categories: 18-29, 30-44, 45-54 and 55+. These categories were used to ensure there were at least 100 weighted respondents in each group.

For specific questions about the sample frames, weighting procedures and/or additional survey details, please send an email to the research team at info@innovating.news. 

How We Analyzed The Data

Data were analyzed using the R statistical computing language. In addition to base R functions, several packages (libraries) were used to clean and analyze the data. These included: googledrive, pewmethods, pollster, survey and tidyverse. We recoded missing, refused and don’t know responses into a catch-all category to keep the sample sizes for each country consistent across each question that did not explicitly have survey logic (i.e., questions that were asked to every respondent).

Data were analyzed using the demographic sample weights supplied by Ipsos and Langer Research Associates. These weights were applied to every analysis and crosstabs in this report. Non-statistical analyses consisted of toplines and crosstabs. Statistical analyses found in this report consisted of Chi-square proportion tests (see the “How we tested for statistical significance” section below). 

Exploratory analyses were run to learn about the data and responses. These methods consisted of both linear (ordinary least squares) and non-linear regression (logistic regression, ordered logistic regression). 

How we addressed data quality

Data quality in the open-ended responses received attention during the analysis phase of the project. CNTI worked with Langer Research Associates and country vendors to review what interviewers recorded from respondents’ open ends. Several anomalies and mistakes were found and addressed where possible.

How we tested for statistical significance

We analyzed the results using Chi-squared proportion tests to assess differences in responses between groups. We used a standard threshold of p < 0.05 for assessing statistical significance. Differences mentioned in the report text are statistically significant.

Additional Notes on Methods

Responses to the question PSAIHELP1 and PSJHELP2 in the online U.S. survey were updated after recontacting individuals who responded “Don’t know.” Responses for recontacted individuals were added back into the survey as a new question and added to the answers from those who did not reply “Don’t know.”

The crosstab data for PSAIHELP1 and PSJHELP2 reflect all “Don’t know” responses being grouped into the “DK/Refused/Missing” catch-all category.

Footnotes

1. The question, “How often, if at all, do you get news and information online from individual content creators or influencers?” was only asked if the respondent was based in the U.S. ︎
2. Those who occasionally or rarely consume news and information this way are not significantly different but all other pairwise comparisons are different.  ︎

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The public is encountering news in an ever expanding array of forms, channels and voices, providing them with more ways to find out about issues and events that matter to them than ever before. As CNTI heard in a series of focus groupsconducted prior to this survey, people are putting a lot of work into getting themselves up to speed on that news. At the same time, many are actively tuning news out, expressing a sense that it is overwhelming. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI)¹ has only added to the myriad of ways information is shared and consumed.

How does the public navigate these new ways of being informed? Where do they see journalism fitting in? And how can journalism do a better job of communicating its unique value? CNTI delved into these questions (and more) in this survey.

CNTI surveyed 4,037 people from four countries — Australia, Brazil, South Africa and the United States — between September 4 and October 16, 2024 to understand their perspectives on who can produce journalism, how they access the information sources they rely on and their attitudes about journalistic uses of technologies such as AI.² As with all CNTI research, this report was prepared by the research and professional staff of CNTI.

Key Findings

News organizations play a key role in meeting the information needs of the public alongside other valued providers, including everyday people. Even as most people say news organizations play an important role in society and still look more to organizations to get informed, a sizable minority (20-30%) look to individuals as their primary source. Furthermore, roughly half or more of the people surveyed in each country say that they believe journalists are not the only individuals capable of providing journalism and, indeed, that everyday people can do so. (Read this section of the report.)

Most people feel generally positive about their ability to keep informed, with digital technologies playing a major role — but trust is the biggest challenge: Across three of the four countries, strong majorities say digital technologies are very important for keeping informed (67-85%) and majorities feel positive about their ability to stay informed (59-67%). The United States was the outlier on both questions: A slim majority (57%) say digital technologies are very important for keeping informed, and while no feeling captured the majority of responses about their ability to stay informed, the plurality feel neutral (though they still express far more positivity than negativity). Despite this positivity, at least 70% of people in each country say “knowing who or what to trust” is at least somewhat of a challenge. (Read this section of the report.)

People are generally comfortable with journalists using technology for professional purposes, but views are more mixed about image editing and AI in the U.S. and Australia: Checking the accuracy of information, translating content and summarizing information from multiple sources are all deemed largely acceptable by a strong majority (71-93%) across the four countries. Differences emerge, however, when it comes to image editing. Brazilians and South Africans are nearly as comfortable with journalists using image editing technology (71-75%), while Americans and Australians are much less so (35-49%). Similarly, Brazilians and South Africans are more positive than negative about AI’s impact on journalism: 46% or more say it will largely have a positive effect on journalists’ ability to report on issues and events. On the other hand, Australians and Americans are more negative than positive: 28-41% say it will largely have a negative effect, while 15-18% say the effect will be positive. (Read this section of the report.)

More than 60% in each country are generally confident that the internet will remain a place to get and share news. Outside the U.S., 58% or more in each country are also optimistic about the impact developments in digital technology will have on their ability to stay informed. (The U.S. is not far behind, at 46%.) Pluralities in Brazil and South Africa are also positive about AI’s impact on their ability to stay informed, while pluralities in the U.S. and Australia are neutral. In each country, considerably more people are positive about technology in general than they are about AI in particular. (Read this section of the report.)

This outlook, combined with the publics’ openness to journalists using various forms of technology, presents an opportunity to producers of journalism: To make use of available technologies in ways that resonate with the public and serve their information needs, while ensuring them that the ultimate product is one they stand by. This can, in turn, increase journalists’ own capabilities in reporting, safety and, ultimately, sustainability.

Read CNTI’s companion report based on surveys with journalists around the world.

Footnotes

1. Given the lack of consensus about what “Artificial Intelligence” encompasses, we use the term broadly to refer to “sciences, theories and techniques whose purpose is to reproduce by a machine the cognitive abilities of a human being.” While there is no agreed-upon technical definition, it is helpful to consider examples like Large Language Models (LLM), which are “trained” on data to recognize statistical patterns and use those patterns to generate plausible text. These kinds of models typically have too many parameters to be fully transparent or explainable, even for their creators. ︎
2. Because surveys were conducted via telephone interviewers in Australia, Brazil and South Africa, compared with self-administered via internet in the U.S. (i.e., different modes), and because of known variability in survey responses across countries regarding social desirability and acquiescence, we primarily base comparisons on combined “somewhat” and “very” (important, challenging, etc.) responses. We also examine results by country rather than as one total. ︎

The post What the Public Wants from Journalism in the Age of AI: A Four Country Survey appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

A lot of ink has been spilled over surveys that examine consumers’ news habits and the platforms they use to access news. Over the past few decades, research has consistently shown a steady shift toward digital platforms and away from print. Regularly conducted surveys have charted the rise (and fall) of various social media platforms. Television, particularly at the local level, has remained an important part of many consumers’ news diets, but even that has started to show decline — especially among young audiences — in some of the most recent such research.

Less attention has been paid to the more nuanced ways people interact with news and the range of content and sources they access across platforms, despite dramatic changes in these areas. In a recent set of focus groups, CNTI set out to better understand how the public defines news, journalism and journalists as well as what role they — and technology — play in keeping individuals informed about important issues and events. Unlike many studies on news habits, we opted for a more open-ended exploration of how people get informed about issues and events by avoiding explicitly asking people about “news” at the outset of conversations.

Our first two essays explored how people understand what news and journalism are, who can (and does) create that work, and how they view the role of generative AI in creating news. In this essay, we look more closely at how participants engage with this news ecosystem, describing the extensive set of habits and practices they have adopted in order to navigate this changing landscape.

We found, across countries and demographic groups, that participants focused much more on describing the habits and methods that they use to stay informed than they were on the sources themselves. Far from the “passive” news landscape that is often described in news habit research, our focus groups participants revealed active approaches to making sense of the mounting volume of multi-platform content. 

While they rely on access to an always-on environment in which information is “pushed” to them, participants see themselves as playing an important role both in curating the information that they regularly consume and in digging deeper into news to verify facts, deepen their understanding, and add perspectives.

Encountering Information Everywhere

The explosion of digital technologies has increased participants’ access to news and information throughout their days. Participants described getting information about topics of interest from a variety of sources: conversations with friends, family and colleagues; posts on social media feeds; messages in WhatsApp groups; and notifications or suggested content from news aggregator apps and other online portals. Sometimes, they seek out news and information from websites and mobile apps from specific news brands. Many keep radio and television programs playing in the background during their daily activities:

“It’s all at your fingertips. You can have as much or as little as you want.” (Australia)

“You know, at times, something is happening at that very moment. And then, you’re just browsing Instagram, and then a piece of news comes across, you know. It’s around you.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

In all, participants describe daily lives awash in news and information. This has created a new set of challenges for individuals as they look to keep up with information and events. 

Many participants described a kind of constant scanning of the information around them, sometimes followed by a deeper dive into content that captures their attention:

I prefer to follow a variety of different topics, mostly health, pop culture, current events going on [in] the world, sports, a little bit of politics and such. I don’t usually actively seek out this information, unless a headline catches my eye and then I will do research to get more information on the topic. And I honestly don’t really have any key sources.” (United States)

More intentional news consumption, as described by these participants, usually happens during a moment of calm in their day or week: on a coffee break during the day, when babies are sleeping, after the chores are done, after the work day ends, on a weekend or when someone is looking for substance over distraction:

“For me it’s news apps. So CNN, BBC, ABC. I get up in the morning at a ridiculous hour because I am a single mum and that’s my only quiet time before it all kicks off. I look at those things.” (Australia)

Older participants sometimes noted that they seek information from more traditional sources because they feel less digitally savvy than some of the younger participants, but even these participants described a fluid relationship to getting informed, in which they check in on the news periodically throughout the day, rather than solely at scheduled times dictated by print or broadcast schedules:

“I would much rather get it like on the go and in like a snippet format, rather than to sit down and actually watch a program for like 30 minutes.” (South Africa)

Actively Creating a “Passive” News Environment

Past research has characterized these behaviors as a shift from more “active” forms of news consumption to “passive” consumption. However, many participants described, in detail, ways in which they are actively taking control of the information they consume, putting a significant level of effort into curating their feeds, seeking out new information within social platforms, and cross-referencing information across multiple sources. 

Unlike a morning television newscast, in which producers and hosts curate a selection of “top stories” for a broad audience, most people are engaging with a new kind of morning newscast for which they are the producers, curating a deluge of social media posts, app notifications, recommended stories and trending hashtags — often while the broadcast streams play in the background. 

The challenge with the new arrangement, as seen in the labors described by most participants, is which information to pay attention to. Throughout the focus groups, participants often described three driving factors in making their choices: 

• Real-life social relationships: Using friendships and other offline relationships to focus their attention on topics of interest to their communities.
• Curated social feeds: Curating the accounts and creators they follow on digital platforms, including social media, podcasts, and YouTube.
• Recommendation algorithms: Collaborating with algorithms that learn from their behavior and surface relevant information.

Real-life Social Relationships

Participants often described the role that social relationships play in anchoring their interest and attention in particular topics. Across countries and age groups, people mentioned spouses, friends, colleagues and other people in their lives, noting that these relationships will encourage them to learn more about an issue to build their own knowledge on the topic and/or as a way to invest in the relationship:

“As friends, if it’s important in their world, I’m more than willing to sort of lend an ear and an eye if it means something to them.” (Australia)

“I actively seek out certain news from time to time if I hear something from somebody on social media or text messages etc.” (United States)

“I’ll […] wait for my wife to tell me, ‘Did you hear about this or this or that?’” (Australia)

“[A]lso in our township we talk, we get information from our peers.” (South Africa)

As a few people — including one professional psychic — noted clearly, staying on top of the information that is circulating in their social communities means staying on top of both more and less trustworthy information. In other words, some information is valuable to know, even if it isn’t accurate — but as discussed below, participants also described efforts to verify relevant information:

“I usually follow a lot of psychic pages, so I usually know, like, like psychic news. Or, like, what’s happening in the psychic community, basically. So yeah, I see the good as well as the bad I guess, the scammers.” (Australia) 

“With the neighbors sometimes, you don’t believe them but you find that they are telling the truth. Sometimes you believe her, yet she has put her spiced version.” (South Africa)

Curated Feeds

Our focus groups often echoed what many studies show: social media plays a big part in how people get exposed to at least headline level news and information. One novel and striking element of the focus group discussions, however, was the way participants described actively curating the information that they receive in their newsfeeds. 

On various digital platforms, participants described in detail their engagement with a mix of hand-picked accounts that they follow:

“I have an electronic subscription to the newspaper published in the large city near me. I have intentionally followed a variety of Twitter/X accounts. Both of those sources might prompt me to seek more specific information about issues and events.” (United States)

Several participants described following professional journalists and news organizations on Facebook, X (Twitter) or Instagram:

“[W]hen I’m talking about Twitter, I think of the journalists who have a profile there and post information about their topics of choice. […] Most of those sites, the news websites, the portals — they also have profiles on media platforms.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“Yes, Instagram can be considered a new source, as I follow many news pages, you know, news outlets pages, they deliver news to me, so I consider Instagram to be a news provider.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“All the newspapers I get it on my Facebook but physical newspapers no, not really.” (South Africa)

Others described following individuals, creators and organizations who curate news and information from a particular perspective that they share, including religious, political and niche interests:

“I just genuinely follow more people that I feel are more aligned with my way of thinking. And I don’t know. I feel like that’s what other people do. They kind of subscribe to following certain yeah news, uh studios and stuff like that, that they feel like ohh, you know I can trust them and stuff like that.” (Australia)

“I think anyone can have a platform, and I think of social media when I think of a platform in the smallest sense of the word. I follow this account with 1,000 on Twitter that provide news, and good news at that, for a very niche subject.” (United States)

“I exclusively follow some people and those are the only people that I get news from.” (Australia)

As discussed in our essay on how people define news and journalism, participants sometimes saw these creators as news producers and journalists. Other participants hesitated to call the creators “journalists” even when they saw them as important sources of news:

“There is this guy. He’s always telling us facts that are happening in real time. He has this page, he’s a local person, and I trust him. And I don’t know who is behind him. I don’t know if it’s a journalist or media source. Ordinario, that guy.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

Participants’ descriptions of their habits suggest that many people prefer to get the morning news roundup, a staple of broadcast TV and radio, through social media, email newsletters and other digital platforms that provide access to an overview of what’s happening in their world.

Recommendation Algorithms

Many participants also described platforms’ recommendation algorithms as playing an important role in shaping their news consumption, most often describing it as useful for helping them filter through the abundance of information online:

“Well, it’s good because that means I don’t need to continuously seek out what whatever content that I wanted to see. The algorithm kind of helps me. (Australia)

“X (Twitter) provides short summaries and links to national news stories as well as some ‘on the ground’ insights. I try to follow a wide variety of accounts to observe how issues might be covered differently.” (United States)

In some cases, participants described a habit of exploring trending topics, searching for hashtags and scrolling TikTok’s For You Page (FYP) as starting points for exploration. For most people “news” is seen as something relevant to more than just one’s self and family and these tools provide access to information that they perceive as having reached a level of broad cultural interest:

“I check out what’s trending on Twitter a lot, usually when there’s quite a popular topic like [named participant] said, it shows up for us, the thing at Rio Grande do Sul, the war between Israel and Palestine, and you receive information yourself.” (Brazil)

They also saw themselves as having an active role to play in ensuring that the algorithm would surface the right content that would be of interest to them:

“On Tik Tok, for instance, I usually scroll up that bar, and they deliver content related to what we stop to read or watch. Some weeks ago, about the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, I was watching a lot. Now I’m in a different vibe. I’m dieting. So, I’m getting lots of content about diets.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“[M]y YouTube algorithm is very much curated to the type of videos that I watch, so it’s probably more leaning to the right side of things, whereas on Reddit it’s a predominantly left-leaning app, the sort of perspective that gets fed to me is the complete opposite. So I like to find them sort of flying down the middle where it’s, you don’t fall off the deep end or either side.” (Australia)

However, even as they called them important sources of information, many also frequently described the limitations of algorithms at presenting them with a full picture of the information around them:

“They’re just showing you what you like. And I don’t think we always need to see what we like. We need to be challenged and that’s how we become educated and compassionate.” (Australia)

“I wish that there was a little bit less algorithmic stuff about news cause I definitely agree with [another respondent]. I love hearing other people’s point of views.” (Australia)

“I think their technologies are built to just show me what they think I will like, or the spin I want to read. I enjoy the technologies I use, but I don’t want just the info I might like. I just want the truth and facts, not opinions.” (United States)

As social media platforms increase their emphasis on showing users content from accounts they don’t follow, participants’ ability to control the contents of their feed and access to specific accounts will change. Additional research into the specific social media behaviors related to information access are needed to better understand the impact of these changes on the news environment.  

Putting Information in Context

As seen in several of the quotes above, participants also often noted that once they had built habits and systems for shaping which information they paid attention to, they often felt the need to verify and contextualize information that they received through their own research.

In line with past research showing an increase in individuals’ confidence in their ability to “do their own research” on important decisions in their life (alongside declining trust in institutional authority), participants described relying on their own research skills to make sense of the abundant information they encounter:

“I have a very, very well formed habit of dissecting it and reading between the lines of the information I’m getting.” (Australia)

“I’m always checking because this is how you operate online. Whenever you seek a piece of news, you have to check. You know, it’s too much online. It’s too much information that you get online.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“…it is really hard if you read something, everyone’s saying you got to go do your own research. You can’t just take it from that one source.” (Australia)

Across countries and individual groups, participants talked about conducting a kind of “comparison shopping” across multiple sources in order to better understand how the same story is presented by different sources. This research seems to take three main forms: verifying information across multiple sources, using search tools to build depth and adding perspectives.

Verifying Across Multiple Sources

Participants often spoke about encountering untrustworthy information online and expressed doubts about their ability to judge an individual piece of information without further context — even when it comes from traditional sources:

“Many times I can’t tell if it’s false so I’ll go to multiple different news outlets to confirm what I read or [do] a simple Google search.” (United States)

“If I see something that I question, I check multiple sources and sites, yahoo, google search and find what I’m looking for, either proving it’s legit or if it’s false. Yahoo, CNN, Fox, Reddit are some of the places I will look to for verification.” (United States)

“We are part of a community and these are people, we verify, like when you get information from a neighbor, you must ask other neighbors about it, that’s how you verify. If all of them agree with each other, then you know it’s the truth.” (South Africa)

This behavior is not limited to the more news-motivated consumers. In Brazil, our focus group took place around the time of a major transport workers strike in Rio. Several participants described first hearing about the impending strike through social media posts and friends and then checking for additional information from other sources:

“I saw that on a friend’s status. He posted that buses would go on strike on Friday. So, I actively search that information, but information is somehow just around me. I get that on Instagram, on stories. Or maybe on WhatsApp. So, this is how I consume information.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“You know, like, I depend on public transportation. So, I saw that a friend posted about the strike on his Instagram, I had to seek for more information, because I don’t know what I’m going to be doing on Friday.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“…maybe people who [don’t have other choices], who depend on going out […] you do have to seek — actively — for that information. And also, information is around me. You know, I got that information, and then I actively seeked for more about it.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

News — the potential of a transit worker strike — was all around participants, but they turned to other sources for deeper information and awareness about the issue. 

In some cases, they want to ensure that the facts are consistent between sources:

“I would see it and I would go to the next channel or let me rather say, normally I read online. So, I would go to Opera news, read about that, then go to SABC news online and still read about the same thing, then I know it is true.” (South Africa) 

“Oh, yes, absolutely [I come across information that is misinformation or fake news]. Because maybe one media outlet reports something one way and the other something completely different.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

In some cases, participants said they sought out individual, more trusted sources to validate new information and sources:

“So, for me when I get information from Facebook especially because in the villages we listen to the radio, I go to the radio to listen and check. If there is no announcement on the radio, then I know it’s a lie.” (South Africa)

“Yes, you know, I myself, I always check the source when I come across a piece of news or information from a source that I don’t trust, or that I’ve never seen before. I always check the source.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“Sometimes I only know something is false if I hear something different on another news source. To avoid false information, I try to stay with the same, most reliable news- but some false news is hard to avoid all the time.” (United States)

Using Search Tools to Build Depth

Participants discussed frequently selecting individual pieces of news or information that they encountered on social media or through personal networks and using search tools — including web search tools such as Google or Bing as well as platform-specific search tools on X, TikTok or Instagram — to learn more:

“I keep up to date through a variety of sources like Online news (New York Times, Yahoo, USA Today), Social Networking (Facebook,Twitter), Google Discover Feed. I like to know about all important events happening over the world. Generally If I find any information through the above mentioned sources and I want to learn more about it, I search on Google or Wikipedia.” (United States)

“Whenever I see something, I access X right away, I type the word there, and everything people are saying about the person and the place shows up.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“Some topics are suggested for you. And then you read those, and then you dive into a more thorough search.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

One of the key reasons participants found value in search tools was their ability to cross-reference multiple sources to identify differences in the tone, framing or presentation of information. For several participants, the search engine results page — with a heterogeneous mix of outlets and headlines — gives them exactly what they want: an expansive view of a topic, often providing them with sufficient context to evaluate the original content that started their journey:

“I go to Google to check who else or you know, what other outlets are talking about that topic and what they are saying if it’s the same content, if it’s the same information that the trustworthy pages and sources are offering. I go on those pages, those outlets that I trust, that I find reliable, trustworthy, and check against the news that I read online.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

Some participants specifically noted that clicking into individual content is less important than the ability to see differences side by side:

“There’s things and and multiple different things I see just from Google Feed News. The same story from three different outlets and it’s different on every single one…” (Australia)

Adding Perspective

Aware that they may only be seeing personalized results from the media they follow and the algorithms that curate social media feeds and prioritize search results, several participants described seeking out different perspectives on a topic in order to help them assess the bias or perspective of the original information they were researching:

“So if, for example, I follow 2 commentators on YouTube one guy’s left-leaning and the other guy’s right leaning. They’re both going to present the same news in different ways, but at least I’m aware that hey, this guy is going to be left-leaning always and that guy’s going to present his views from the point of view of a guy on the right side…” (Australia)

For some participants, seeking out additional perspectives and opinions is a critical part of how they make sense of information — but as opinion-focused content, they don’t view it as news:

“It’s like once I’ve got the kind of initial information the rest of it, it just kind of builds upon that, but I don’t really see it as news.” (Australia)

As noted previously, participants often said that they believed news is only information that is presented without opinion or bias. Adding perspectives helps them add depth to their understanding of an issue or news item, particularly when they feel that individual sources have a particular bias or political slant:

“As somebody here mentioned, you don’t trust that piece of information. And everything that is informed, you have to check. When they communicate a piece of news, that is misinformation, or is not real, they correct it, later on. You don’t know what to believe, you know about politics, like they mentioned, it was hard to tell apart what was true from what was not. The rightists were attacking everything. So, it raised questions and issues about it. So, when it’s too much, you know.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“Now, I would say the way that I get a “red flag” and will go do further research is when it’s emotionally charged or hyperbolic in nature. There are also news organization[s] I don’t use anymore because I just know that they will have half the truth in a way that is misleading to understanding what is going on to promote their own political slant.” (United States)

A few participants in the U.S. and Australia also referenced Ground News, a site that analyzes coverage of stories across news outlets, identifying the political lean of the outlets that are covering a story and providing links to different outlets. 

Finding the Limits of Personal Research and Personal Verification

An important driver of participants’ efforts is what they described as growing uncertainty about the accuracy of information that they encounter. Political polarization, commercial bad actors and scammers, and general misinformation were all reasons people gave for why they spend so much time digging into the snippets of information that they encounter on social media. 

Still, there was some recognition that because of the significant labor involved in this practice, people don’t always dig into information that they see in more passive ways and just accept that it’s true, even though they know there is a lot of potential for misinformation to reach them: 

“I would say that nowadays, it’s so common that we fall prey to them, and we don’t even notice. It depends on how interested you are in doing a more thorough search in seeking the source…. ​​if it’s a piece of news that has no impact on my life, it doesn’t make much of a difference. If it’s fake or not, then I don’t dive deep into that. If it’s something that has a bigger impact, then I say, I’ll do a more thorough search.” (Brazil, from Portuguese)

“I can’t always tell right away but my gut feeling might say well this doesn’t sound right. I don’t actively try to avoid false info because I don’t have the time or energy to try to weed it out. If it is there, it is there. That’s why I try to use credible sources for news, so they do that verification for me!” (United States)

Participants valued individuals, tools and organizations that reduce the labor involved in getting high-quality, accurate information. Much of the value that participants ascribed to journalists is in the skill and ability to identify and verify information and to synthesize it. They also described a range of algorithms, machine learning tools and generative AI tools that are helping them close the gap, with automated fact-checking on platforms, content summaries and content filtering.

AI summarization tools within search tools were frequently seen as performing some of the same synthesis tasks that participants were doing on their own. They were widely seen as helping save time. Participants frequently noted that they liked having access to the underlying links and references within the summary.

In South Africa, several participants noted that the Microsoft Copilot AI was especially useful for this:

“…I want variety and more information, because you find when you get information on WhatsApp, it’s not as much as when you actually go and you use Copilot to [find] the information that I’m looking for.” (South Africa)

“…with the AI, Copilot, I really like it because it’s made life so much easier because what it’s done really, it’s like taking all the data from everywhere and putting it together for you.” (South Africa)

However, there were no clear agreements among participants on how to make it easier to navigate the flood of information or about ways to limit the spread of misinformation, reflecting on the significant differences in awareness, opinions and perspectives. Our larger quantitative study, currently underway, aims to shed more light on these questions.

Conclusion

The focus group conversations demonstrated that far from a “passive” news environment, the modern digital landscape has thrust many people into an active mode of news consumption in which they are responsible for providing the news judgment, sourcing, fact-checking and synthesis skills that they frequently ascribed to journalists. 

In a way, this combination of passive and active behavior embodies how people combine news and journalism in their daily lives. In every focus group, participants articulated the value of getting top-level news from their personally curated mix of “push” sources. They also clearly expressed the importance of the points at which they take charge of the process by “pulling” from a range of different sources and mediums. The value of this deeper “pulling” activity is that it provides the rigor and thoroughness that participants also noted makes journalism most valuable.

However, what the focus groups couldn’t reveal is the extent to which participants are or are not getting the news and information they need. While they’re taking active steps to manage their information environment and news diet, their sense of self-efficacy doesn’t guarantee that they’re getting accurate or complete information. Many participants expressed doubts and a sense of unease about this as well. 

Other studies have explored different signals of news engagement (e.g., commenting, sharing, or responding to news) as measures of the active role that people play in their news environment. By these measures, news engagement and participation have declined in much of the world. But few studies have looked in depth at the patterns and paths that news consumers have adopted for navigating this new environment as indicators of news engagement and participation. 

Additional research is needed to better understand how well these new habits and methods are equipping people with the information they need to navigate the world and participate in civic life, whether through elections, community involvement or social connection. CNTI looks forward to supporting and collaborating with others in the field to further explore these questions.

More Information

This essay is the third in a series of insights drawn from these focus groups. Even as CNTI uses the full focus group discussions to inform a much larger quantitative survey in the fall, we felt it was worth sharing some insights now.

Additionally, a part of CNTI’s mission is to help synthesize research conducted across the community and the globe. To that end, it was a pleasure to see that several of the points discussed above come through in a recent report on AI in News produced by the Reuters Institute. Reinforcing findings in this emerging area of technology are especially meaningful and helpful in designing further studies. CNTI will continue to look across the research community to both synthesize and contribute to this important area of work.  

About the Defining News Initiative

The Defining News Initiative is an 18-month effort that seeks to understand how concepts of journalism, news and information access are being defined in countries around the world. In three different realms — in legislation, among the public and among journalists themselves — our research and analyses will provide clarity and insight on the importance these definitions play in safeguarding an independent news media, freedom of expression, and the public’s access to a plurality of news in ways that inform policy discussions and decision-making.

How We Conducted This Research

CNTI contracted with Langer Research Associates to recruit participants for a combination of virtual — synchronous and asynchronous — and in-person focus groups and focus groups moderators, in four target countries: Australia, Brazil, South Africa and the United States. 

These countries were selected strategically to capture geographic, cultural, and political contexts, as well as different news environments. Our recruitment efforts involved a screening questionnaire that asked potential participants about their information-seeking interest and behavior, prioritizing, but not exclusively relying on responses from individuals who reported that they keep up with events and issues of the day in some capacity. We recruited a total of 89 participants from these four countries (22 in Australia, divided into 2 groups; 25 in Brazil, divided into 2 groups; 29 in South Africa, divided into 3 groups; 15 in the U.S.), which we conducted between June 3 and June 7, 2024. In our recruitment efforts, we were intentional about maintaining diversity based on gender and age. 

Recruitment and focus group discussion materials were designed by CNTI researchers and were reviewed by Langer Research Associates, local vendors and others with research and subject matter expertise. All focus groups in Brazil were conducted virtually in Portuguese and one focus group in South Africa was conducted in-person, with participants conversing both in Zulu and English. For focus groups conducted in languages other than English, such as the ones in Brazil and South Africa, transcripts were translated into English. 

The post Focus Group Insights #3: In a Digital World, Getting the News Requires More Work, Not Less appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

Overview

The digital transformation of our news systems has, among other things, led to an “unbundling” of news information and the upending of journalism’s financial model in countries around the world. Many news organizations have been struggling to find a new model alongside continued newsroom layoffs and emerging news deserts. 

In response, a number of legislative efforts worldwide aim to bring more funding to the journalism industry and a rebalancing of digital revenue recipients. Many recent efforts have focused on new financing streams, mainly provided by either digital platforms — who now reap more than 50% of global digital advertising revenue — or, to a lesser degree, governments.

In an effort to protect the journalism industry, authors of this legislation seem to be attempting three main goals: (1) establish funding sources for digital journalism, (2) define specific types of journalism worthy of preservation and (3) contribute to a more robust digital news environment that benefits the public and functioning, free societies. 

When reviewed as a body, these legislative efforts display inventiveness and energy  in creating possible solutions for journalism’s future.  At the same time, while remuneration streams to support journalistic reporting are a critical component of a sustainable digital news and information environment, it is important to closely examine how legislative efforts around finance may impact other critical elements. 

This study examines 23 recently enacted or proposed legislative efforts from 2018 through 2024 aimed at providing revenue streams for journalism. We hope it offers a fulsome method for analyzing possible paths forward. There are two main parts of the report:

Part One groups this legislation into seven models for financing journalism. The financing models are organized around legal mechanisms that range from an expanded view of copyright to direct support for news by platforms and governments:

Part Two looks at how this legislation impacts other issues critical to a sustainable news ecosystem that supports functioning, free societies. We first address an implicit yet inconsistently treated concept that emerges from this legislation: appropriate compensation, if any, for various uses of (and interactions with) digital content. This includes the notion of setting legal parameters for proper compensation that goes beyond traditional definitions of copyright. We then look at how these financially-oriented legislations impact issues within other core aspects of journalism.

Area A: The Concept of Digital Usage in Legislation

• Issue: When Is It Appropriate to Charge for Digital Usage?
• Issue: Is Compensation for Digital Usage Consistently Applied?
• Issue: Who Benefits from Appropriate Compensation?

Area B: Balancing Financial Streams with Core Elements of Journalism

• Issue: How Can We Sustain Diverse Journalism?
• Issue: How Can We Sustain Independent Journalism?
• Issue: How Can We Sustain Journalism that Serves the Public?

Conclusions

While this body of legislation seeks to provide important financial lifelines to journalism, they also reveal several areas that require further consideration in order to create a sustainable news environment that enables an informed public. Specifically:

1. Reviewing recent financial models around the world brings to light the serious questions at hand about what a sustainable news media means and what it will look like in the years to come. The funding mechanisms — ranging from ancillary copyright and platform support to tax credits and hazard taxes — each stress different elements and set different precedents.  These approaches demonstrate the inventiveness of many who seek to shore up journalism, which is good to see. Yet they also pose issues and questions:

• Many pieces of legislation are proposed as temporary or triage measures to save journalism. As such, they can lack a holistic understanding of what the legislation (individually or overall) means for the flow of news information and how it should be managed long-term. This may pose problems should pieces of legislation become renewed without reflection.
• The continued development around financial models offers policy makers and stakeholders a broad array of possibilities to consider in enabling sustainability, and poses a question: how can the  news environment be made sustainable? If these efforts are stop-gap measures, what should a sustainable news ecosystem look like after they are complete? If some of these efforts are not emergency measures, how well do they fit in with other elements of the ecosystem?

2. It is important to address parameters around the use and sharing of digital content, but the way this legislation has begun to define it is problematic. This set of legislation presumes there is a point at which it is appropriate to require compensation for certain digital uses of and/or interactions with content. The legislation defines that point differently and in ways that create challenges given the wide range of how digital content is accessed and shared. This is a critical construct to get right as it will have a far reaching impact. It both requires and deserves more focused deliberation. Within this legislation there is:

• Disagreement about whether basic digital interaction amounts to usage.
• Inconsistent handling and application of how digital elements such as the URLs/links and small “snippets” of content should be addressed.
• A disconnect regarding the exact beneficiaries of this proposed digital usage, whether it should be journalism organizations, journalists or any creator of content (news or not).
• No consideration of how parameters would be applied beyond the scope of news publishers and specific large technology platforms.

3. A healthy news ecosystem requires a diversity of journalistic orientations, styles and innovations to serve the full public. Protection and further advancement in this area deserves top-level attention in legislative deliberations. The ease of digital content creation provided an entryway for smaller, independent, creative and minority-focused journalism and a way for the public to access it. A piecemeal approach to supporting diversity in journalism risks taking steps backwards in this regard. Within this legislation:

• Some legislation protects midsize and larger organizations, whereas others focus on smaller entities, and the amount of money that would be distributed across the spectrum is often not clear. 
• Legislation modeled around usage fees and licenses have limited references to minority ethnic media, while certain required negotiation approaches and state-funded efforts offer some explicit protection.
• The tax credit and data extraction models are the only models that explicitly define and cover local journalism. 
• Only the EU Directive and New Jersey’s consortium bill explicitly speak to innovation and keeping an eye on what developments might arise in the future.

4. This legislation as a whole raises questions about journalistic independence which should be directly addressed, especially in a global environment of declining revenue and press freedoms. Legislation around digital usage aims to lessen news organizations’ dependency on technology companies. However, it is not clear whether legislation could actually increase that dependency in certain ways. Legislation also inherently increases opportunity for the government to become involved in financial remuneration for journalism entities, which makes it important to be sure journalistic independence is overtly protected. More specifically:

• There is still uncertainty about specific details of implementation when it comes to governmental oversight or the implementation of legislation within the required negotiation and usage fee models. 
• Models designed around required negotiation, platform support and data extraction raise some concerns about government involvement in the mechanisms for distribution of journalistic content.
• Some of the legislation that focuses on platform support, local usage fees and hazard taxes may actually increase news organizations’ dependence on platforms even though they intend to mitigate it.

5. These legislative efforts, even when naming the public as ultimate beneficiaries, do not fully consider how to serve the public, including how the public stays informed and the kinds of journalism it values. References to the public are made throughout the legislation we reviewed, but there is little explicit explanation of how these steps will meet the public’s information needs and interests. The purpose of providing revenue streams for journalistic content — enabling an informed public and functioning, free societies — will be lost if the public does not access or value that content. Our analysis finds:

• Sometimes specific topics believed to be of interest or relevance to the public are specified for revenue support in several of the models (e.g., ancillary copyright, required negotiation and usage fees) but not all. 
• Concerns about public data and privacy emerge in the usage fee and data extraction models. 
• Withdrawing information from technology platforms risks less public access to information.

6. The evolution of media remuneration legislation has brought some improvements, but both journalism and the public can be better served if   those involved in discussions more thoroughly and proactively evaluate the legislative options. Legislative approaches have been adapted in response to problems resulting from earlier iterations and to the different needs of the journalism industry in the contexts of particular countries or states. And in several cases, the deliberations have resulted in non-legislative agreements negotiated among the government, parts of the news industry and technology platforms. This includes for example, the emerging outcomes of negotiations around California bills AB 886 and SB 1327. Whether resulting in formal legislation or not, a more beneficial approach to policies addressing news sustainability would be to think through their goals, options and potential unintended impacts with a more global and holistic perspective.

So, what is the most effective approach, legislative or otherwise? How can we make sure enacted solutions sustain the kind of journalism and information environment that functioning, free societies need? CNTI does not lobby or propose specific legislation and instead is dedicated to helping surface these answers through further research and collaborative, multi-stakeholder discussions, which we look forward to advancing in the months to come with a few discussion guideposts offered at the conclusion of this report. 

Find more details about this study’s methodology and data here.

Part One: Legal Mechanisms for Journalism Financing

As the first step in this analysis, we identified seven core legislative models of journalism remuneration that have been put forward which use different legal mechanisms for financial streams. We lay out each model and note cases where pieces of legislation have built off of each other over time. As bills are proposed and others amended in an effort to sustain the news ecosystem, these models offer a framework for evaluating their potential benefits and risks.

Different from broader frameworks, this analysis is tightly focused on specific bills and their structures of financial remuneration. We have focused on efforts made between 2018 – 2024 including many state-level bills in the United States. We did not capture measures related to direct governmental advertising spending or incentives and regulation regarding the ownership of news organizations, but we included links to these efforts in the methodology. There are also ongoing antitrust cases against technology companies as well as aspects of public policy in the civil society ecosystem, such as the US 2019 Covid Relief Bill, that can have a material impact on news finances, but are outside the direct scope of this research.

Some laws and bills apply more than one model. For example, a draft bill in Brazil includes language about bargaining which stemmed from Australia’s bill in 2021. Hybrid legislation has been marked with an asterisk (*). In addition, while some legislative examples may not have been enacted, they often remain under consideration so have been included in this report.

Model 1: Ancillary Copyright around Content

Legal Mechanism: Payment for the “use” of copyrighted materials, including journalism, when online on a mass scale

Financial Structure:

Journalism Defined/Protected As: Copyrighted content or copyrighted publication in any form; hyperlinking is exempted

Legislation with this model: European Union [2019/790] (2019, enacted); Brazil [PL 2370] (2023, proposed)*

An ancillary view of copyright is based on the premise that content made available online, such as journalism articles, are being utilized digitally in ways not well captured in earlier or existing copyright law. According to this argument, content creators such as news organizations are not being adequately compensated. Therefore, laws and policies that follow this model attempt to expand the ways that digital platforms, particularly large-scale ones, make use of content even if they are not necessarily quoting directly from that content.

The European Union’s (EU) 2019/790 Directive exemplifies this model. Before its enactment, several efforts across Europe attempted to expand copyright. For example, Germany’s 2013 Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger (Ancillary Copyright for Press Publishers) allowed for short quotes of undefined length or “snippets” of news to warrant compensation. Though the German law was enacted, attempts to leverage the law were unsuccessful in practice. Publisher Axel Springer restricted the snippets from Google in 2014, for example, causing a plunge in traffic to its news sites. Springer lifted its restriction within two weeks.

The 2019 EU Directive has taken a slightly different approach. Sensitive to potential issues of copyright overreach, the Directive makes clear that elements such as URLs are not in themselves copyrightable; it also directs states to include text and data mining exceptions or limitations. Very short extracts also appear to be available for general use, though the Directive does not define “short.” In addition, in recognition of the ways online environments work, the Directive seeks to protect the open sharing of scientific, cultural and non-commercial information and does not mandate compensation for solely indexing of or access to that content. The Directive has enabled protections around the online use of content for 2 years (Article 15, para 4) and thumbnail images and short texts can be considered copyrightable. Due to EU procedures, some member states have yet to define and enact their own laws, yet this Directive has resulted in agreements between publishers in Germany, France, Spain and others.

There is vagueness in the Directive regarding exactly what content is being protected, a vagueness echoed in recent efforts to create a similar law in Brazil. Brazil’s PL 2370/2019 is still undergoing debate and revision, but at the time of this report, it has been encouraging negotiation between larger commercial platforms (with over 2 million users in the country) and creators of journalistic content whenever “elements, summaries, or […] other tools to expand any information present” are employed or added.

Model 2: Required Negotiation with Businesses

Legal Mechanism: Negotiation support for news organizations given digital platforms’ broad background access to news content

Financial Structure:

Journalism Defined/Protected As: Content or publication/organizations (US: journalist*)

Legislation with this model: Australia [Act No. 21] (2021, enacted but no designees); Brazil [PL 2370] (2023, proposed), Canada [C-18] (2023, enacted); New Zealand [GB 278-1] (2023, proposed); United States [S. 1094] (2023, proposed); possibly also California [SB 1327] (2024, proposed)*

Efforts are being made to codify an expanded notion of what using the news in an online context might mean, beyond using direct quotations or an individual reading an article. Beginning in Australia, several laws and bills avoid the creation of new taxes or direct government involvement in payment by instead requiring negotiation (“bargaining”) or arbitration between publishers and platforms that carry news. The result is direct payment from platforms to businesses (though to date terms have been negotiated outside the mandatory framework).

Different from the Model 1’s copyright approach around content, the required negotiation agreements focus on the activity of “availability” or “access,” which encompasses the work that digital platforms undertake to acquire, crawl, or index information in order to make that information available online. In addition, this legislation tends to consider elements such as URLs and snippets of news articles as worthy of compensation (though existing copyright laws are meant to remain in place). In the New Zealand bill, making content available includes “when any part of the content is reproduced on the digital platform or when the digital platform facilitates access to the content by linking to it.”

All of these pieces of legislation define conditions through which bargaining, or ultimately arbitration, must take place between large platforms (e.g., Australia’s “significant bargaining power imbalance” or over 50 million users monthly in the case of JCPA) and news organizations, the definitions of which vary. Brazil’s effort, having been inspired by Australia’s Code, also focuses on the negotiation between news and technology companies. 

In theory, this set of legislation leaves the precise terms of the remuneration to the negotiation, designed in part to allow for the possibility of collective negotiation. This exemption from antitrust enables news companies to organize. However, should a platform decide to no longer carry news, the requirement to negotiate may not be possible to enforce; in Australia, Meta has said it will drop news from its platform should the minister try to designate it under the Code. The law and its enactment can also be different, as the case with Canada has shown (discussed further in Model 4).

Model 3: Local Usage Fee around Link Distribution

Legal Mechanism: Platform payment for the local public’s direct access of journalism content, such as through clicks, or payment for locally relevant content

Financial Structure:

Journalism Defined/Protected As: Journalists, who are defined by employment time and tasks, within news organizations

Legislation with this model: United States – California [AB 886] (2024, not passed)*; United States – Illinois [SB 3591] (2024, proposed)

In contrast to the open-ended negotiating frameworks of Model 2, recent approaches in the United States have sought a more straightforward assessment or quantification of digital usage around distribution or links. Examples of payments to publishers based on the number of links can be found in two state bills, originally using virtually identical language: the California Journalism Preservation Act (AB 886), 2023 version and the Illinois Journalism Preservation Act (SB 3591), whose language copies much from the earlier California example.

Illinois’s proposal (which was very similar to California’s proposal prior to amendments to the CA bill on June 10, 2024) states that liable technology platforms must “track and record” the number of times an eligible journalism provider’s content is linked, presented or displayed to residents of the state on a given digital platform. The proposal further specifies how the usage fees will be allocated: one percent of the usage fee will go to “digital journalism providers that produce 30,000 annual search occurrences in Illinois searches or 10,000 annual social media impressions from Illinois.”

The bills using this funding mechanism have been criticized for possibly fueling clickbait and misinformation. Against these critiques, lawmakers revised California’s proposal in June 2024 in ways that deeply altered its structure as well as its language. Now instead of compensating for clicks, the bill attempted to outline strong reasons for online platforms to bargain with local news organizations – making it more similar to Model 2 in many ways. “Usage” was redefined as more generalized access to the content produced by journalists and the compensation model is much vaguer; the precise calculations evaporated from the California example. California’s latest version of the bill appears however to have been pulled off the table, in favor of a deal with Google and others that, among other elements, may provide newsrooms with nearly $250 million in support (a portion of this total is for an “AI Accelerator” which is not journalism specific).

Model 3 is noteworthy because these examples of legislation move away from defining journalism organizations alone and instead focusing on the professionals who work for them. The new version of California’s bill attempted to compensate news organizations with journalists — including freelancers — who produce information that is of relevance for “local California audiences,” though how that relevant access or usage will be measured outside of clicks was not clear. 

The financial support in both of these bills (CA and IL) is structured to come from large digital platforms such as Google and Meta. Qualifying platforms are defined by their national user base (possessing 50 million United States-based monthly active users or subscribers) or national yearly revenue (550 billion USD in sales or adjusted market capitalization).

Model 4: Platform Support for News Organizations

Legal Mechanism: Platforms as financially responsible for a new digital environment in which the news industry cannot produce and distribute quality journalism

Financial Structure:

Journalism Defined/Protected As: Press organizations

Legislation with this model: Canada [C-18] (2023, enacted)*, Indonesia [Decree No. 191884] (2024, enacted)

Indonesia’s legislation states that digital platform companies have a responsibility to support “quality journalism” by cooperating with press organizations. Examples of collaboration between platforms and press companies include paid licensing and profit sharing. However, the regulation lacks specific details in several of the financial support provisions.

Inspired by the Australian News Media Bargaining Code (Model 2), Canada’s C-18 law did not initially involve the government serving a central role. However, the development of C-18 departed from Australia’s example in several ways. The implementation of C-18 led to a negotiation between Google and the Canadian government, rather than between companies. For this reason, Canada’s example now seems closer to requiring direct platform support of news organizations than the other legislation in Model 2. Meta, on the other hand, responded by removing all news organizations and links so that the law would not apply. Google threatened a similar removal of links prior to the negotiated agreement with the government.

It is unknown how these policies would fully work in practice. The Press Council in Indonesia, Dewan Pers, is a third-party industry association that is expected to have a large role in determining the outcomes and processes of how platforms support news companies in the country. As of July 2024, the Canadian Journalism Collective was still working out issues of governance with requirements for diverse representation among its directors.

Model 5: Government Tax Credits

Legal Mechanism: Tax credits for local news, which citizens need access to

Financial Structure:

Journalism Defined/Protected As: Local for-profit newspapers, journalists

Legislation with this model: Canada [Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit; Digital News Subscription Tax Credit] (2019, enacted); United States – Virginia [HB 1217] (2022, not passed); United States [HR 4756] (2023, in progress); United States – Washington State [SB 5199] (2024, enacted); New York [A2958C] (2024, enacted); Wisconsin [AB 1140] (2024, not passed); Maryland [HB 540] (2023, in progress); Illinois [SB3592] (2024, enacted)*

This model exemplifies efforts to leverage tax credits as a way of supporting local news. Justification for the use of public monies for this purpose hinges on the importance of local news for citizens to be fully engaged in, and make decisions about, their communities. 

Depending on the context, tax credits can be non-refundable, providing an exemption or “break” for qualifying businesses. They can also be refundable, potentially amounting to additional funding for particularly small organizations. Both types of credit can be seen in Canada, whose efforts became effective in 2019. The Canadian Journalism Labour Tax Credit offers a 25% refundable tax credit on salaries and wages while the Digital News Subscription Tax Credit offers all individuals a non-refundable personal tax break on subscriptions to qualifying organizations.

There are many ways that tax credits have been and are being considered. First, tax credits are being offered directly to journalism organizations. Examples include straightforward tax relief, as with the United States House of Representatives’s Community News and Small Business and Support Act (NSBSA), Virginia and Washington State. Examples from New York and Illinois offer refundable tax credits. New York’s law offers financial support to news organizations for the compensation (and retention) of journalists through tax credits, some percentage of which is refundable; It should be noted that the law benefits print newspapers explicitly, while non-profit, TV and radio organizations do not currently qualify. A similar situation exists in Washington State, where the emphasis is on print newspapers; local digital-only sites do not qualify. 

Tax credits can also be considered for other companies, incentivizing advertising in local journalism. Maryland’s example focused on costs associated with advertising incurred by small to midsize newspapers. A similar effort is underway within the NSBSA and Massachusetts; Illinois recently passed a state budget that not only included $25 million of refundable tax credits for local journalist wages and funding for college scholarships (making Illinois’ case a hybrid with Model 6/government grants), but also tax credits for local businesses advertising in local newspapers. 

Finally, tax credits can be offered directly to consumers themselves. Wisconsin initiated an effort to provide tax breaks to its residents for local newspaper subscriptions. In its current iteration, the bill did not pass the State Senate in April 2024. 

Because this funding mechanism works within existing tax codes, no special oversight authority has been identified as required in either bill.

Model 6: Third-Party Government Grants

Legal Mechanism: Government support of local news through grants administered by third-parties, such as universities and consortia

Financial Structure:

Journalism Defined/Protected As: Local journalism efforts or developing journalists in local newsrooms

Legislation with this model: United States – New Jersey [A3628] (2018, enacted); Canada Local Journalism Initiative (2019, enacted); California [AB 179] (2022, enacted); New Mexico [SB 159] (2023, not passed); [SB 57] (2024, not passed) — though related governor-approved appropriations in both years; Wisconsin [AB 1139] (2024, not passed); Illinois [SB 3592] (2024, enacted); California [SB 1327] (2024, in progress – uncertain)

As opposed to Model 5 (tax credits), government grants actively give funding to more broadly defined journalistic efforts. 

Because this model delegates decision-making to a consortium or other third parties, these laws do not include precise definitions of journalism content, organizations or individuals. This may allow grantors more creativity and flexibility in determining which efforts might benefit from funding. However, in cases where funding explicitly goes towards fellowships, it is clearly supporting workforce development within local newsrooms. 

The amount of funding distributed through this mechanism depends on how much the governments designate. The level of funding can often be much lower than what is provided through the other models discussed in this report. As of 2024, the New Jersey Civic Information Coalition, founded in 2018 through State Bill A3628, has supported 81 projects with $5.5 million (USD) while Canada’s Local Journalism Initiative has given out $50 million (Canadian dollars) since 2019 and has recently committed $58.8 million more. California’s bill contained both types of financial support, with $25 million (USD) designated to the University of California at Berkeley to support local news fellowships and $5 million in grants for ethnic media.

Model 7: Hazard Tax by Government upon Platforms

Legal Mechanism: Platforms extraction of (local) citizens’ data amounts to a general hazard that requires remuneration

Financial Structure:

Journalism Defined/Protected As: Local journalists/journalistic service providers

Legislation with this model: United States – California [SB 1327] (2024, in progress – uncertain)*

California has the only bill that fits within this model. This hazard tax (which has some significant distinctions in structure and operation than typical taxes — see the language of the bill for more) is supported by two justifications. The first is an understanding that large internet corporations are collecting data about people in order to advertise products and services to them. Because people exchange their data for access to the products and services, this “barter” is not captured within typical sales tax structures. The second is a recognition that journalism — especially ethnic media — performs a critical role in functioning, free societies. Implicit here is that advertising has been a critical part of journalism’s sustainability model (Section 1 of CA SB 1327).

Possibly due to these two purposes, there are two mechanisms for funding. Funding from large corporations would be obtained directly at the sales tax rate (7.25%), the results of which go into the “Data Extraction Mitigation Fee Fund.” This revenue eventually benefits qualifying journalism organizations after satisfying fundamental requirements such as school funding (Section 4). In addition, not only can qualifying organizations obtain credits against the taxes that they owe the state, but smaller organizations can also gain funding because it is structured as a refundable tax credit. Different from Model 5, tax relief is provided by the platforms so that there is no loss of revenue to the state. Furthermore, extra revenue paid by the platforms may directly fund organizations’ local news endeavors.

The bill’s author, Steve Glazer, likened his effort to taxes that mitigate environmental hazards. Though any internet corporation that employs the citizen data barter for targeted advertising might be held accountable, the bill only seeks remuneration from very large organizations; the amounts potentially owed by smaller technologies are regarded as “negligible.” 

The legality of this effort is currently in question and may be challenged constitutionally based upon past decisions such as Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233 (1936) and Minneapolis Star Tribune Company v. Commissioner, 460 U.S. 575 (1983). However, the recent negotiation among the State of California, Google and others that replaced the CJPA (Model 3) may also mean that Glazer’s bill will not move forward. 

Part Two: Key Issues for a Sustainable Digital News Ecosystem

All legislative approaches under consideration attempt to address a critical requirement for the future of journalism: regular financing streams. They cannot and do not aspire to address all aspects of a sustainable digital news ecosystem. In fact, several of these measures have expiration dates or requirements for renewal, highlighting their stopgap or temporary approach to finding funding solutions for the news industry. 

Yet laws can create long-lasting effects, which can only be mitigated through a thorough analysis of potential risks and tradeoffs. The justification for requiring payment from platform companies hinges on an emerging premise: the journalism industry, and with that the digital news ecosystem, may be sustained by charging for the digital “usage” of journalistic content by technology companies. Other approaches described in the models suggest that sustaining the news ecosystem may involve more compensation from governments.

Setting aside the ongoing debate about whether news providers can generate financial sustainability themselves, the following section discusses several issues related to the rationale behind the funding mechanisms. The first set focuses on the notion of compensation-worthy digital interactions beyond what a reader, consumer, or end user might also need to pay. The second set focuses on how these legislative examples handle the needs for diverse and independent journalism and journalism that serves the public.

The Concept of Digital Usage in Legislation

Across five of the models, the notion of usage encompasses the different ways that digital content is made available to the general public. Usage also applies to the technical means by which digital platforms process news information to make it available to a wider audience. For this version of usage, legislation such as Canada’s Act C-18 seek “fair compensation to the news businesses for the news content.”

“Use” and “usage.” Several pieces of legislation discuss the terms “use” and “usage” to describe different interactions with digital content.

• Examples from Models 1 and 2 focus on publications and content, particularly how they are made available via digital technologies:
  • EU Directive (2019), Article 15 “Protection of press publications concerning online uses.”
  • Brazil (2023): Section III-A; Article 21-A. “Journalistic content used by digital platforms for third-party content [Os conteúdos jornalísticos utilizados pelas plataformas digitais de conteúdos de terceiro] that have more than 2 million users in Brazil, produced in any format, including text, video, audio, or image, will result in compensation to the legal entities that produce journalistic content.”
• Examples from Model 3 focus on the sharing of that content through links:
  • California (2023 version): “journalism usage fees”; “journalism usage fee payment.”
  • California (2024 version): “Title 23. Compensation for Journalism Usage.”
  • Illinois (2024): “Section 15. Notice requirements for journalism usage fee payments.” 
• Model 7 focuses on digital use through the data collected by end users or news consumers.

“Access” and “availability.” Though examples from Models 2 and 4 do not always employ the explicit term “usage,” their descriptions of digital “access” or “availability” mimic the kinds of interaction captured in the other models.

• The Australian and Canadian examples employ the terms availability, as well as interaction and (in Australia) distribution. 
• In the US JCPA, “use” may be distinct from “access.” The term is tied to a series of activities that are not the subject of the bill (e.g., “no antitrust immunity shall apply to … the use, display, promotion, ranking…”). 
• New Zealand’s Bill (2023) employs both the terms “availability” and “use”: “Supporting the efforts of New Zealand news media entities to secure revenue for the use of their content online will provide a critical revenue stream and mean that the sector will not be reliant on government funding in the future.”

It is also worth noting that while this legislation and this report center on revenue lifelines for journalism, questions around fair compensation and usage are also at the heart of other policy discussions related to journalism and technology, such as the use of content to train generative AI models.

Issue: When Is It Appropriate to Charge for Digital Usage? 

Exactly what digital usage of news information warrants compensation? Significant portions of journalism’s content are now being distributed through digital platforms which offer far less industry control than earlier distribution methods like print. Recent legislation reflects various ways lawmakers are addressing the question of compensation for digital usage. 

Much of this legislation aims to overturn common understandings and practices on the internet that — due to the protections of open knowledge and public exchange in many democratic societies — allowed many aspects of an article’s content, such as its URL, title and short summaries, to be referenced, shared, accessed or “used” without compensation. This is because ideas, information and facts are not copyrightable. Thus, there are questions that need to be addressed in order to isolate whether the concept of appropriate compensation around digital usage can support journalism moving forward and, if so, how.

Usage or Discovery: Determining Link Value. As researchers and others seek to quantify the significance of technology platforms providing access to news, there is a critical question at hand: What precisely is the value of facilitating digital interactions by linking to news? Is it usage, discovery or both? Much remains unclear.

• The News Media Alliance and Initiative for Policy Dialogue argue that large platform technologies such as Google and Meta gain significant financial benefits from the inclusion of news information. On the other hand, Meta’s decision to remove news from its platform in Canada and to consider removing news from the Australian market suggests that the financial gains may not be significant.
• Others argue that providing access is a promotional service to news organizations — like a newsstand or grocery aisle with publications — allowing their content to be discovered; sharing information via aggregators may draw people to news content more. In fact, a recent study has shown that the majority of Canadians appear not to notice that they have lost professional news content — not only are they not visiting traditional or ethically-minded news sites, they are now using the platform to get a more biased and less-factual kind of news.
• The recognition that technology platforms provide valuable traffic to news organization content has led to the inclusion of non-retaliation clauses within many agreements so that platform companies do not willfully affect that traffic. However, non-retaliation agreements may suggest that, in order to ensure the appearance of compliance with the law, technology companies are now required to carry all news providers. The requirement to carry news content may fundamentally change the purpose of certain digital products. It may also negate the concept of fair compensation for digital usage altogether if a technology has no choice but to provide it. There is some debate on this issue.
• If “usage” equals “the digital processing of content,” what constitutes digital processing varies depending on the result or product. In some instances, small elements of metadata allow for discovery of news information without computation. But, other kinds of digital interactions for various news products (e.g., automatic news summaries) likely require more processing of the original text or content. With the incorporation of generative AI, how we define “computational usage” is also important.

Diminishment of Open News, Expansion of Copyright? Charging for digital usage expands copyright and producer or author rights in ways that raise questions about the open sharing of news in a digital context. Compensation for digital usage may also be illegal in certain contexts.

• The question of whether “access” qualifies as compensation-worthy usage poses a problem for a context like the United States where the “fair use” of information exists. Fair use is a way that copyright-protected works can be used without compensation in certain contexts that protect the public’s freedom of expression and incentivizes creativity in a way that benefits society.
• Moreover, within the United States, legislation that impinges on the curation or moderation of third-party content is eligible for First Amendment protection; the Supreme Court’s recent Moody v. NetChoice (2024) decision rejected any must-carry obligations. 
• In contexts where author rights exist, such as the EU and Brazil, we see the actual or potential removal of exemptions for news content. Take, for example, the Copyright and Information Society Directive 2001 (2001/29/EC), which was amended by the 2019 Directive reviewed in this analysis. The Copyright and Information Society Directive used to explicitly provide for exceptions and limitations to copyright in EU states when it came to making news available (Section 5). 
• Either way, the information and facts of news reports themselves are not copyrightable. This makes the effort to define compensation around digital interactions particularly thorny. Exceptions to copyright and author protections are also made in the name of education and scientific progress. This may also be why a key metric in the EU Directive regarding digital interactions with news content has to do with time (2-year expiration). Despite efforts to limit their impact, there is a risk that the expansion of these rights lessens incentives to use up-to-date information.

Impact on Paywalls. If consensus about fair compensation for digital usage is achieved, should this have an impact upon content paywalls? For example, if local news organizations gain tax breaks or subsidies from the government — which ultimately come from taxpayers — does this require some of that news to be freely accessible to the public? 

Issue: Is Compensation for Digital Usage Consistently Applied?

Beyond any questions regarding the principle itself, there is still no clear consensus as to how compensation for digital usage is applied either when considering which elements of digital content qualify or how to calculate the compensation. This lack of consensus is an indication of the difficulties behind the overall concept of compensation for digital usage.

Variance in Applicable Components. A number of components in news content — such as URLs/ links and quotes — are being directly addressed or indirectly referenced by this body of legislation. However, the different pieces of legislation do not always agree with each other about the treatment of these specific elements.

• URL links 
• Article titles
• Very short texts and text snippets
• Larger text quotes 
• Article summaries
• Usage of text and audiovisuals for indexing
• Usage of text and audiovisuals for generative products
• Information about the event or fact being reported on

Inconsistent and Limited Application. Compounding the lack of clarity around which elements of news content justify compensation, there are also inconsistencies in application. Though usage is defined, the formulas for compensation vary and it is not being applied to every organization or entity who might qualify. These inconsistencies undermine the usage argument.

• For example, there is an inconsistency in the metrics and definitions of usage rate: while some laws focus on the amount of content being used as a way to create the formula for compensation (Models 1 and 3), others look at the news costs for an organization, no matter how much content it may generate (Model 5). The formula is not always transparent, as with Australia’s agreements which are confidential (Model 2).
• There is a risk that sensationalist and malign reporting could be remunerated in some cases. In Australia (Model 2), there are ethics tests that news organizations must undergo to prevent the funding of sites that do not engage in editorial review or fact-checking. However, this type of review does not exist across the board (e.g., the controversies around the earlier version of California’s AB 886).
• Most of these proposed statutes also focus on defining applicable usage fees for a specific group — only very large platforms qualify (such as platforms with at least 50 million impressions per month or “third-party digital content platforms that have more than 2 million users”). These efforts are an attempt to rebalance the flow of digital revenue away from the companies earning significant monies from advertising. While the focus on larger companies may provide access to larger sums of money, it does not fully define what is worthy of compensation regardless of the user. For example, should news organizations themselves — many of whom have also created technology platforms for themselves that share external links — fall under this “appropriate compensation” concept?

What content is free and what deserves compensation?

Issue: Who Benefits from Appropriate Compensation?

While this body of legislation makes the argument that digital usage warrants compensation, it is not yet clear what exactly that compensation should amount to or who should benefit from it. The financial mechanisms included in many examples of legislation could apply to all content being aggregated and re-distributed on the internet. There is also the question of whether the results of these mechanisms are fair to the public.

Within these financial mechanisms, there are inconsistencies and limits to who may qualify. The various legislative efforts approach the challenge of identifying and protecting legitimate beneficiaries differently, whether based on content, organization, professionals or some combination. With the intended goal of bolstering news sustainability, further consideration is warranted about who is covered and how news organizations may use the funds they receive.

Journalistic Content. Journalism topics, information or publication formats included within the legislation focus on current affairs and the public interest.

• The main orientation of Model 1, expanded copyright, is around the content. As such, the EU Directive does not include a definition for journalism or journalist, though it does include a definition for press publication. Compensation in Brazil’s example must take into account the amount of original journalistic content created, among other factors. Laws and bills from Model 2 tend to focus on the notion of news content dealing with current affairs and the public interest, with beneficiaries defined as the organizations (e.g., producers, broadcasters, businesses, entities, etc.) who produce this content.

Journalism Organizations. The journalism organizations (i.e., organizations that produce journalism or who employ journalists) protected by the legislation tend to be online, traditional and midsize or large, though there are sometimes explicit protections for small, local outlets especially in government-supported mechanisms. 

• In Models 2 and 3, pieces of legislation are expressly focused on midsize or larger organizations. For example, qualifying organizations are based on thresholds for revenue which include $150,000 (AUD) in Australia and $100,000 (USD) in the US (though the 3 largest US publishers are excluded from JCPA). An important question is whether hedge funds, which own news organizations, may qualify.
• For those in Australia and New Zealand (Model 2), organizational qualification checks include professional standards tests, audience tests and content tests. The legislation in Australia and New Zealand do not require any transparency about how the funds within an organization should be spent while the legislation crafted by the US (Model 3) and Canada (Models 2 and 4) added a transparency requirement.
• Under Model 5, Wisconsin’s attempt provides subscription credits to local news organizations, however, New York’s effort excludes consideration of non-profit and broadcast entities.

Journalists. Qualifying journalists are mostly defined by full-time work within a range of specific kinds of tasks within formally incorporated news organizations, though some legislation recognizes freelance roles.

• Perhaps in growing recognition that earlier legislative attempts may not support the actual production of news, Model 3 focuses on trying to ensure that journalists are themselves beneficiaries. Journalists are defined as humans or “natural person(s)” who engage in a number of news production activities such as “gathering, preparing… presenting, distributing, or publishing original news or information…” (AB 886) (though it is not entirely clear what type of original news gathering could qualify). Organizations then become qualified if they, for example, spend 50%-70% of the received revenue on journalists. The most recent revision to California’s bill also made sure to include freelance journalists.
• In Model 4, Indonesia’s regulation stipulates that “news is a journalistic work by journalists” in a context where journalists have official press cards.
• In the New York example from Model 5, a qualifying news journalist resides within 50 miles of the local news agency under consideration for the tax credit and must work at least 30 hours per week on qualified services (i.e., activities related to producing original news content). Model 7 focuses on outlining requirements such as the residence of full-time journalists, who are defined by activities such as “gathering, preparing, recording, directing the recording of, producing, collecting, photographing, writing, editing, reporting, presenting, or publishing original local community news for dissemination to the local community.”

Balancing Financial Streams with Core Elements of Journalism

Beyond the issues related to digital usage and compensation, we turn our attention to the main goal of the legislation: sustaining journalism so that it can ultimately fulfill its mission to support functioning, free societies. In finance-focused approaches, it is important to examine what might be missing and what might unintentionally introduce new risk to advancing this overarching goal. 

A range of values and ethical considerations are important for strong, high quality journalism. Particularly in today’s digital world, CNTI has laid out five components critical to a fully sustainable digital news environment: revenue to support journalistic work; journalistic independence; diversity of providers; technology to produce, distribute and receive news; and a public that finds journalism valuable and relevant.

This analysis considers three of those elements beyond revenue: (1) diversity, (2) independence from influence and conflicts of interest and (3) public service (including what is relevant to the public). A detailed examination of the language inside each piece of legislation related to these three elements can be found in this table.

Issue: How Can We Sustain Diverse Journalism?

One of the ways the internet has proved transformative for news is how it has diversified both the forms and producers of journalism. With Web 2.0, the world read, heard and engaged with many different perspectives on a range of topics, some of which had never received attention in mass media. As Canada’s efforts have noted, “citizens’ access and exposure to a diversity of content play a central role in the making of a resilient democracy.”

Within the legislation, we find little overall attention to journalistic diversity. The safeguarding of diversity includes aspects of journalism’s content, organizations and its professionals,  as well as dimensions such as ethnic media, those serving gender identity or other special communities and independent and freelance journalism. We selected a few to consider here.

Minority Ethnic Media. Some special considerations exist for minority ethnic media; however, it is not always clear whether and how these outlets will receive funds.

• Two of the examples from Model 2 consider contributions from minority media. Both Canada and New Zealand’s legislation also feature specific provisions for indigenous (Canada) and Māori (New Zealand) news media. These special protections for diverse news are not found in the Australian or United States legislation. While these protections are valuable, they miss opportunities for a more comprehensive consideration of what supporting minority media might entail. However, the administrators over Canada’s Local Journalism Initiative, mentioned in Model 6, may allow for more comprehensive consideration.
• Both the California and Illinois legislative drafts from Model 3 cite minority ethnic and, in particular, Black media’s importance: “Given the important role of ethnic media, it is critical to advance state policy that ensures their publishers are justly compensated for the content they create and distribute.” 
• Yet, it is not clear that especially small minority publications, though mentioned in the preamble of the California’s draft, would be rewarded. A number of small, local ethnic media do not meet the thresholds of revenue. As print publications, minority ethnic outlets also may not qualify since these legislative efforts are focused on digital distribution.

Local Journalism. Several of the models make reference to local news, with some examples of legislation specifically striving to protect local journalism organizations and the journalists who work within them. However, locality is a relative term, and is defined differently in the pieces of legislation that reference it. It would be helpful to consider the concept and language more thoroughly.

• Models 2 and 3 make reference to local news, but have no special provisions other than national or state-level registrations or physical locations.
• Models 5 and 6 focus on local organizations with local journalists, as described earlier, such as New York’s journalist residency requirement. 
• Model 6 also offers examples where grants and fellowships through universities or other organizations can support local journalism projects. 
• The aim of the California bill in Model 7 is to support local journalism, which mentions the consideration of small ethnic outlets. Local journalism is determined by the residence of full-time journalists who are defined by activities such as “gathering, preparing, recording, directing the recording of, producing, collecting, photographing, writing, editing, reporting, presenting, or publishing original local community news for dissemination to the local community.” Smaller outlets receive a larger percentage of funding relative to their size.

Innovation. While we can see some areas in which news diversity is being considered or protected, this is not the same as creating a context in which journalism might flourish. The stated goal of much of this legislation is triage: to simply give journalism a financial lifeline. Thus, the legislation overall does not consider the issue of continued developments within journalism or what might be required to remain flexible in the future. 

• The EU Directive within Model 1 and the New Jersey Consortium of Model 6 are the only examples within our analysis that approach the challenge of providing additional revenue while considering creativity and continued innovation in the digital marketplace. For example, the Directive notes that a “harmonised” legal framework needs to protect against the exploitation of works, thereby “stimulat[ing] innovation, creativity, investment, and protection of new content” while also allowing for limitations to education and also, potentially, text and data mining technologies.
• Copyright can aim, it has been argued, to protect diversity and robustness in journalism by rewarding the creativity of all outlets, including small ones, because it applies to all content rather than a particular type of provider. Whether ancillary copyright proposals further or diminish this diversity is a point of discussion.

Issue: How Can We Sustain Independent Journalism?

Independence from influence and conflicts of interest have long been a key value and ethical consideration in journalism. For some, usage payments from technology companies to journalism providers alleviate concerns about the dependence of the journalism industry on digital platform companies (such as to reach audiences or philanthropic offerings of money or technology tools). The creation of mechanisms that justify fair or reasonable compensation by technology companies may help to do this, but they require laws. 

With increased legislation, there are increased implications for governmental influence — especially long-term as government regimes change. Indeed, as CNTI discusses in other publications, press freedoms around the world are in decline across all government regime types, alongside increased government reach. We also explore possibilities where legislation may inadvertently increase dependence upon technology companies.

Government Influence in Financial Determination. When it comes to the implementation of these different pieces of legislation, questions arise as to when and how special bodies will exercise their oversight and whether they have a role in determining who receives compensation.

• Some of the legislation within Models 1, 3 and 5 do not outline special roles for government, relying instead upon the existing structures of courts for copyright and tax commissions for tax credits. However, there is governmental involvement in defining which organizations or individuals can qualify for tax credits to begin with. 
• Other legislation within Models 2 and 7 outline special roles for governmental agencies and regulators. These duties include designating companies who must negotiate, validating the eligibility of news organizations and enabling arbitration in negotiations with technology companies. Sometimes governmental involvement may be limited to refereeing arbitration. As currently worded, Brazil’s draft legislation includes details about the institutions responsible for overseeing fair negotiations (e.g., a Private Chamber of Arbitration or a body of the federal government (Article 21-A para. 9)). 
• Uncertainty exists regarding precisely how these pieces of legislation will be implemented in many instances. Though we know that the extra-governmental Press Council has been identified as the body of special oversight in Indonesia under Model 4, the details of this role have not yet been determined. And under Model 7, the California Franchise Tax Board suggests that certain organizations, such as ethnic media or smaller outlets, may gain priority in funding but it is as yet unclear how this will be determined.

Government Impact on News Distribution. The current legislative examples tend to increase the likelihood that news distribution will be affected. 

• Some legislation under Model 2 may include requirements for platforms to carry all purported news organizations indiscriminately, albeit that requirement may be unintentional. The “non-retaliation” stipulations within the required negotiation agreements are intended to ensure that platform companies do not attempt to take actions against organizations who wish to use the mechanism. However, as discussed earlier, platforms may consider themselves required to carry the content of all providers that identify themselves as news outlets, including propaganda or promotional sites, in order to not fall afoul of this law. This stipulation may now be unconstitutional in the United States after the Moody v. NetChoice decision. 
• In Model 4, Indonesia’s case is still undetermined, but seems to require platforms to enforce potential Press Council directives. Overall, much is still unknown about how Indonesia’s policy would work in practice. While the Press Council has been an important function of journalistic independence from the government, there is also evidence that its authority can be sidestepped.

Platform Influence on Journalistic Content and Funding. While this legislation seeks to empower news organizations through increased bottom lines, and offers increased opportunities for non-philanthropic funding from technology platforms, questions of platform independence, let alone greater dependence, still exist.

• In several of the models, it seems that platform influence may now be introduced in different ways. News companies are dependent upon technology companies to provide them a digital definition of locality in Models 3 and 6. In other examples, the legislation or implementation is simply unclear.
• Increasing the percentage of funds coming from technology companies can make a news organization literally dependent upon those companies, raising questions about possible downstream effects to that organization’s editorial decisions or other issues.

Issue: How Can We Sustain Journalism that Serves the Public?

A central need for functioning, free societies is an informed, engaged public. Thus, so is news that serves the public and a digital news environment that is openly accessible to them. The models of legislation in this analysis vary in how well they support these goals. While some references are made to serve the public interest, what that actually means or how these pieces of legislation do that is either vague or omitted. The legislative efforts also often neglect issues such as privacy or the risk of losing access to news in online platforms altogether.

The Public Interest (or Interests). When invoked, the meaning of the term “the public interest” is not always clear — it is sometimes “The Public Interest” in terms of the common welfare, but it at times is about topics the public is interested in or curious about. 

• On the one hand, the goal of supporting journalism that serves “local, regional, national, or international matters of public interest” is explicitly addressed in a couple of the models, particularly in Model 2. In the Australia example it is clear this includes what Australians consider to be important: “current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level” or “issues or events that are relevant in engaging Australians in public debate and in informing democratic decision-making.” This attempt to define the content worthy of legislative support makes sense, but what if deep entertainment-related news is, in fact, what a certain portion of the public relies upon?
• On the other hand, the New Zealand proposal does include broader categories for relevant news content such as “communities that share other characteristics (including age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethical belief, or religious belief); or (e) people with an interest in specific subject matters (including the arts, sports, science, health, business, or the environment).”

The Public’s Privacy. The issue of what is owed to the public when it reads news and when its data is used (or “extracted” in the term of the most recent California bill) is a question that not only platforms but also news organizations should answer.

The Public’s Access. Here we focus on the public’s literal accessibility so that one can digest key information that is relevant to know in free societies, particularly within democracies. Making journalism widely accessible is another area largely improved with the birth of the web and online distribution. Will legislation seeking to bring a lifeline to journalism providers inadvertently make it harder for people to access news they find relevant? 

Appendix: The Legislation

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