American News Pathways 2020 Project

Among black Americans, 72% say coverage has been good or excellent and 85% say Trump’s message has been completely or mostly wrong.

Black adults were much more likely than whites and somewhat more likely than Hispanic adults to frequently discuss the pandemic with others.

With Election Day six months away, 52% of Americans are paying fairly close or very close attention to news about the presidential candidates.

People in this group are most likely to say the outbreak has been made too big of a deal and journalists have been exaggerating the risks.

31% of U.S. adults say they discuss the outbreak with other people most of the time; another 13% say they talk about it almost all of the time.

Amy Mitchell (Pew Research Center), Philip Howard (University of Oxford), Jane Lytvynenko (Buzzfeed News) and Lori Robertson (Factcheck.org) discuss misinformation during the coronavirus outbreak, and ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as part of SXSW 2020's virtual sessions.

More Americans hold positive than negative views of the news media’s COVID-19 coverage, but Republicans and Democrats remain starkly divided.

The percentage who say journalists have exaggerated the risks of the outbreak has decreased notably in recent weeks.

61% give equal attention to national and local coronavirus news.