Mark Jurkowitz

True crime is the most common topic, making up 24% of top-ranked podcasts; 15% of the top podcasts focus on news. The next most common topics are politics and government (10%); entertainment, pop culture and the arts (9%); and self-help and relationships (8%).

Roughly half of U.S. adults say they have listened to a podcast in the past year, including one-in-five who report listening at least a few times a week. Most podcast listeners say this experience includes hearing news, which they largely expect to be mostly accurate. Large shares of listeners say they turn to podcasts for entertainment, learning or having something to listen to while doing something else.

In recent years, several new options have emerged in the social media universe, many of which explicitly present themselves as alternatives to more established social media platforms. Free speech ideals and heated political themes prevail on these sites, which draw praise from their users and skepticism from other Americans.

55% of journalists surveyed say that every side does not always deserve equal coverage in the news. 22% of Americans overall say the same.

The social media sites that journalists use most frequently for their jobs differ from those that the public turns to for news.  

A survey of U.S.-based journalists finds 77% would choose their career all over again, though 57% are highly concerned about future restrictions on press freedom.

The total number of journalists assigned to state capitol buildings is up 11% since 2014, though figures vary widely by state. And as newspapers employ fewer statehouse reporters, nonprofits are filling much of the void.

Looking at respondents to 2020 and 2021 surveys reveals differences in vaccination rates based on where people turned most for COVID-19 news.

A new study of posts on popular public Facebook pages about the early days of the Biden administration finds that the focus of these posts, as well as the assessments of the new president, differed widely by the ideological orientation of the pages.

11% of stories about Joe Biden’s early days as president cited an anonymous or unnamed source, and fewer than 1% relied solely on such sources.