A Glimpse Into Modern News Consumption

Where Jurors in Trump Trial Get Their News

Prosecutors and defense lawyers tried to divine the political leanings of prospective jurors...

The New York Times Charlie Smart

The chart below, pulled together by The New York Times when looking over the responses from jurors in the Donald Trump porn star hush money trial (I still cannot quite believe this is a sentence you can type), showcases how they get their news. (Or at least say they do.) A few things to call out:

• One person of the 18 (12 jurors plus 6 alternates) gets their news from X. One!
  • That same person also uses Truth Social. Can't imagine which side picked this person for duty...
• On the other end of the spectrum, 13 of 18 get some level of their news from The New York Times. The only ones who don't are the person above, juror #4 who claims to use no sources (at least of those listed) to get news, another juror who says they use Google and TikTok, another one who only claims to use Google, and one alternate who also says they don't use any of the listed services.
• Sort of wild that while NYT gets 13 of 18, The Wall Street Journal only gets 4 of 18. Though this is more general New York news consumption, I guess (and apparently not a finance crowd – though one juror works in finance) – hence, The New York Post, NY1, and WNYC showing up on the list.
• Perhaps related to the above, The Washington Post only gets 2 of 18 – as do the BBC and CNN.
• Surprisingly, Facebook also only gets 2. Then again, they clearly want nothing to do with news these days...
• TikTok gets 2 as well – or, double X, which is even more insulting to X.
• The only real "winners" here would seem to be:
  • The New York Times – again, the trial is in New York but it's such a dominating performance that you have to ask if they wrote this questionnaire or something? Certainly they're enjoying covering it!
  • The BBC – just two mentions, but again, this is in New York, not London.
  • CNN – also just two, but good relative to their peers, especially given the current ratings...
  • Google – 5 out of 18 mentions is good for second place here.
  • TikTok – again, double X and equal to Facebook
  • Truth Social – just one mention is impressive (not every outlet got one – more on that below) even if this is a trial of Donald Trump.
  • The Wall Street Journal – 4 out of 18, good for third place.
• The "losers" here are:
  • X – see: above, but I also wonder if this trial took place two years ago and/or if the service was still called 'Twitter' if it wouldn't have been far higher? What if no one beyond the one person knew what 'X' even was? It's certainly possible!
  • Fox News – also just one mention. Sad!
  • USA Today – given the circulation, even while falling like a knife in recent years, one mention seems low if this was truly a "general population".
  • Huffington Post – zero mentions given (despite being listed in the survey)
  • Newsmax – zero mentions given
  • Yahoo – zero mentions given
  • Donald Trump – he's on trial for (allegedly) paying a porn star hush money
• Also worth noting that the survey didn't specifically list Instagram, which seems surprising, though perhaps they figured it would be bucketed in with Facebook?
• Ditto with Threads, but it's also just too new – and, again, seems to want nothing to do with news. Mastodon, Bluesky, and the like also too new (and small) to warrant inclusion here, of course.
• No Flipboard, NewsBreak, SmartNews, or any other "new" news service...
• No Axios, Puck, Semafor or other newfangled news organizations (which often cover Trump)...
• Sort of surprising that Bing wasn't included given that Google and Yahoo were. Poor Bing.
• No ChatGPT or any other AI services – again, probably too new to include, but would have been interesting!
• Genuinely surprised not to see Apple News on here given its default inclusion on every single iOS device. That's billions of devices with it installed. I'm guessing it would have showed up quite well in such a survey...