Every figure on this page links to the organization that produced it, and each was re-checked against that source before publishing. How the most-visited news websites use video on their homepages, in our own read of 258 news sites; how many people get news from YouTube, TikTok, TV and news influencers, from Pew Research Center, the Reuters Institute, Ofcom, the European Parliament and the University of Canberra; how much people trust news on video platforms, from Gallup and the Media Insight Project; how much local and national news U.S. broadcasters and publishers produce, from their own 10-K filings; how many people make news video, from BLS, the FCC and the Census Bureau; what Meta, Google, YouTube and TikTok say about news; what peer-reviewed research finds; and where the popular news video numbers came from.
Only 41.5% of the 258 most-visited news homepages we read showed a video player (video ads included), while 63.6% linked to Instagram and 13.2% showed vertical video. (Our read)See details
34% of U.S. adults regularly get news on YouTube; TikTok rose from 3% in 2020 to 20% in 2025 (Pew). (Pew Research Center)See details
That is a 6.7-fold rise for TikTok as a news source in five years. (Our calculation from Pew)See details
77% of online respondents across 48 markets watch online news video weekly, and online news video beats broadcast TV news in 45 of them. (Reuters Institute)See details
The growth went to platforms: video on publishers' own sites fell to 23% weekly, and 72% of news video viewing in 2024 was mainly on platforms. (Reuters Institute)See details
21% of U.S. adults regularly get news from news influencers, including 38% of adults 18 to 29 (2025). (Pew Research Center)See details
55% of TikTok news video viewers watch clips under two minutes, while 23% of YouTube news viewers watch videos over 20 minutes each week. (Reuters Institute)See details
TikTok is the biggest single news source for UK 12-to-15-year-olds, at 42% in 2026. (Ofcom)See details
Trust in news on social media averages 22% across 48 markets; in the UK, 65% of broadcast TV news viewers rate it trustworthy. (Reuters Institute, Ofcom)See details
U.S. newspaper publishing jobs fell 74.4% from 2008 to 2025, while TV station jobs fell 7.4% (BLS). (BLS; our calculation)See details
79% of news leaders said investing more in video was important for 2026, and YouTube was their top platform priority at +74. (Reuters Institute)See details
The "40% of Gen Z use TikTok instead of Google" line is a 2022 spoken remark about U.S. 18-to-24s looking for lunch spots, from an unpublished Google survey. (TechCrunch)See details
How do the biggest news websites use video?
Fewer than half put a video player on the homepage. On October 31 and November 1, 2026 we loaded the homepages of the 300 most-visited news domains in the Tranco top 100,000, identified as news outlets through Wikidata, in a headless browser. 258 loaded readably; the rest blocked automated browsers, disallowed crawling, or failed to load. Of those, 41.5% showed a video player, a count that includes video ad players. Among U.S. outlets, 53.2% did (25 of 47); among sites ranked in the Tranco top 1,000, 56.2% did.
The platforms get more homepage space than the players. 63.6% of the homepages linked to an Instagram account, 43.8% to YouTube and 32.2% to TikTok. 58.9% had a Video, Watch or TV link in the navigation, 43.4% one labelled Video or Watch, and 26.4% a Live link. Vertical video, the format readers now watch on TikTok and Reels, appeared on only 13.2%, and 13.6% had a video playing by itself after load.
Most-visited news homepages, read Oct 31-Nov 1, 2026
Much homepage video is advertising. 51.6% loaded a dedicated video player or video-ad vendor. The most common was Aniview, a video ad platform, on 82 sites; YouTube embeds loaded on 64, Dailymotion on 32, JW Player on 27 and Brightcove on 11. We checked the 30 highest-ranked sites flagged for video by eye: 26 visibly showed a player, five of them only a video ad, one was a false positive and three could not be confirmed. Per-site results are in site-homepages.csv and the counts in crawl-summary.json.
Where do Americans get their news in 2026?
Mostly from screens, and less from television than a year ago. In Pew Research Center's August 24-30, 2026 survey of 5,166 U.S. adults, 88% said they at least sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, against 63% from television (Pew Research Center). 70% got news from search, 59% from social media and 32% from podcasts (Pew). AI chatbots have arrived as a news source: 15% used one for news at least sometimes, up from 9% in 2025 (Pew).
Television is losing its place as the preferred source. The share of U.S. adults who prefer TV for news fell from 34% in 2025 to 28% in 2026 (Pew). The age gap is wide: among adults 18 to 29, only 46% got news from TV, 75% from social media, 8% preferred TV and 38% preferred social media (Pew).
Many Americans still want to watch the news rather than read it, but on TV. In Pew's August 2025 survey, 44% of U.S. adults preferred to get news by watching it, against 37% reading and 19% listening (Pew). Of those who prefer watching, 62% prefer TV (Pew). Young adults lean the other way: only 31% of adults under 30 prefer to watch, and 45% prefer reading (Pew).
Local TV news still reaches most Americans, but fewer of them watch it on a TV set. 65% of U.S. adults got news from a local TV station at least sometimes in 2025, down from 70% in 2018, and of them 56% mainly watched on a traditional set, down from 76% in 2018 (Pew).
How many Americans get news on YouTube and TikTok?
About a third get news on YouTube and a fifth on TikTok. In August 2026, 34% of U.S. adults said they regularly get news on YouTube, second only to Facebook, and 23% on Instagram (Pew Research Center). TikTok is the fastest riser: 3% of U.S. adults regularly got news there in 2020, 10% in 2022, 14% in 2023, 17% in 2024 and 20% in 2025, holding at 20% in 2026 (Pew). That is a 6.7-fold rise from 2020 to 2025 in Pew's series. YouTube's line is flatter: 23% in 2020, 26% in 2023, 35% in 2025 and 34% in 2026 (Pew).
Among the people who use each platform, the news share is higher. 53% of U.S. adult TikTok users regularly got news there in August 2026, up from 22% in 2020 (Pew). 41% of YouTube users regularly got news on YouTube, the same as in 2025 (Pew). Young adults get news everywhere at once: 39% of 18-to-29-year-olds on YouTube, 39% on TikTok and 43% on Instagram (Pew).
Pew's separate March 2024 survey of TikTok users found a lower 40% regularly getting news there, against 52% in the fact-sheet series that year; the two use different surveys, so we print both (Pew). In that survey, 68% of TikTok news consumers got news from influencers or celebrities, 55% of TikTok users saw breaking news there, and 48% of users 18 to 29 used it at least partly to keep up with politics (Pew).
When news breaks, young adults go to social media first. In December 2025, 31% of U.S. adults under 30 said social media is where they turn first for more information on breaking news, against 6% of those 65 and older (Pew).
Who makes the news on YouTube?
About half of popular YouTube news channels belong to news organizations. Of the 377 most popular YouTube news channels Pew studied in November 2019, 49% belonged to established news organizations and 42% were independent (Pew Research Center). 57% of the independent channels centred on YouTubers who built their following on the platform (Pew). In January 2020, 26% of U.S. adults got news on YouTube; of those, 23% often turned to news organizations and the same share to independent channels, and 73% expected the videos to be largely accurate (Pew). Negative-toned videos on the 100 most viewed news channels averaged 184,000 views in December 2019, against 117,000 for positive ones (Pew). These 2019-2020 figures are the most recent channel-level study Pew has published.
How many people watch news video worldwide?
Most online news users now watch it weekly. Across the 48 markets in the Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2026 (YouGov online panels of about 2,000 people per market, fielded January-February 2026), 77% said they watched online news video each week (Reuters Institute). In 45 of the 48 markets more people watched online news video than broadcast TV news; only Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands were exceptions (Reuters Institute). Weekly use of social video for news rose from 52% in 2020 to 65% in 2025 (Reuters Institute). These are online samples, so they under-represent older and offline people.
The growth went to platforms, not publishers. Weekly viewing of video on news organisations' own websites and apps fell to 23% in 2026, 10 points lower than in 2021 (Reuters Institute). Between 2023 and 2026 news video viewing grew on TikTok (+7 points) while it fell on publisher sites (Reuters Institute). Already in 2024, 72% of news video consumption was mainly on platforms, against 22% on publisher sites (Reuters Institute).
Social and video networks overtook news sites in 2026. 54% used social media and video networks for news weekly, ahead of news organisations' own websites and apps (Reuters Institute); 30% called them their main source, up from 22% five years earlier (Reuters Institute), and 12% used nothing else, double the 2020 share (Reuters Institute). Among 18-to-24-year-olds, 52% said social media, video networks and AI chatbots were their main way of getting news (Reuters Institute).
Weekly use for news, Digital News Report 2026 markets
Source: Reuters Institute, Digital News Report 2026. YouTube reached 34% for news and Facebook 43%. In 2026 the platform questions were re-asked in late March with 1,000 people per market, so they are not directly comparable with 2025, when YouTube reached 63% for any purpose and 30% for news (Reuters Institute).
Platform use for any purpose keeps growing. TikTok's reach grew from 15% to 37% in the five years since the pandemic, and YouTube reached 69% (Reuters Institute). Instagram was the biggest platform for news among 18-to-24s, reaching 42% of them weekly (Reuters Institute), and almost four in ten of that age group used TikTok weekly for news videos, against 36% for Instagram (Reuters Institute).
Countries differ enormously. TikTok was used for news weekly by 10% of online respondents in the United States and 7% in the UK, but by More than half in Thailand and Kenya (Reuters Institute). In Thailand it reached 55% for news (Reuters Institute); in India, around 58% of a younger, English-speaking online sample relied on YouTube for news (Reuters Institute). Weekly online news video use exceeded 80% in Thailand, Indonesia, Peru and South Africa and sat around 50% in Germany, the UK and the Netherlands (Reuters Institute); in the UK it rose from 40% in 2021 (Reuters Institute). By region, 54% in Africa watched news videos on YouTube weekly, against 24% in Europe (Reuters Institute), and 60% of Europeans used social or video networks for news (Reuters Institute). Video on publishers' own sites drew about a fifth in Latin America, North America and Europe, rising to 32% in Africa (Reuters Institute).
In the United States, weekly news video use rose from 55% in 2021 to 72% in 2025 (Reuters Institute), 61% watched it on third-party platforms (Reuters Institute), and social and video networks (54%) overtook TV news (50%) for the first time (Reuters Institute). 54% of U.S. 18-to-24s called them their main source (Reuters Institute).
Do people watch short or long news videos?
Both, depending on the platform. In 2026, 55% of people who watch news video on TikTok watched clips under two minutes (Reuters Institute), while 23% of YouTube news watchers watched videos longer than 20 minutes each week (Reuters Institute). Young YouTube viewers watch longer, not shorter: 52% of 18-to-24s watching news on YouTube watched videos over five minutes weekly, against 41% of over-55s (Reuters Institute). In 2024, 66% accessed short news videos weekly and 51% longer ones (Reuters Institute); in Thailand 87% watched short news video weekly, in the U.S. 60% (Reuters Institute). Only around 4% used online video as their only source of news (Reuters Institute).
Much of it is incidental. 54% of TikTok news users mostly see news while on the platform for other reasons, while 55% of YouTube news consumers go there for news on purpose (Reuters Institute). X and YouTube were the only networks where More than half of users called them a useful way to get news (Reuters Institute). 21% of YouTube news users watch live news there (Reuters Institute).
News is moving to the living-room screen through apps. Across 27 markets, 27% used third-party apps such as YouTube to watch news on a smart TV (Reuters Institute), including about 70% of 18-to-24s who watch news on a smart TV (Reuters Institute). In the UK, TV sets accounted for 46% of in-home YouTube viewing in 2025, up from 27% in 2022, in Barb data cited by Ofcom (Ofcom).
Online, most people still prefer to read. In 2025, 31% preferred to watch online news, against 55% reading and 15% listening (Reuters Institute).
How do people in the UK get news from video?
Online first, with TV close behind. In Ofcom's 2026 News Report (5,397 adults aged 16+, fielded November 2025 to March 2026), 82% of UK adults accessed news online in the past month (Ofcom) and 60% saw news on social media or video-sharing platforms (Ofcom). Among 16-to-24s that rose to 78% (Ofcom). Facebook was the most-used social platform for news at 39%, with YouTube at 33%; Ofcom says the gap between them halved in a year (Ofcom). BBC One was still the most-used single news service, reaching 59% (Ofcom), and 69% of 16-to-24s still got news on TV (Ofcom). Ofcom changed its survey method in 2025, so 2026 figures are not directly comparable with earlier years.
Time spent on news is rising, and TV's share of it is falling. Ofcom estimates UK adults spent 72 minutes a day on news in 2026, up from 61 minutes (Ofcom); TV's share of that time fell from 31% to 25% (Ofcom). Few rely on social media alone: 2% got news only from social media (Ofcom). Older adults moved online too: 76% of 65-to-74-year-olds used online news sources in 2026, up from 41% in 2018 (Ofcom). 21% had used an AI tool for news (Ofcom).
Broadcasters reach people on the platforms too. In Ofcom's 2025 data, around half of those who saw news on YouTube or X saw BBC News content there (Ofcom), and counting those encounters lifted BBC News' reach among 16-to-24s to 73% (Ofcom). Around one in five adults who saw news on X or TikTok saw it from influencers or online-native creators (Ofcom).
The earlier series shows the trend under the old method: TikTok reached 11% of UK adults for news in 2025, up from 1% in 2020 (Ofcom), online sources rose to 70% from 64% in 2018 (Ofcom), 51% used social media for news (Ofcom), and three-quarters of 16-to-24s did (Ofcom). Ofcom estimated 61 minutes a day on news in 2025 (Ofcom), and about one in three adults using video platforms such as TikTok for news reported seeing videos about news stories there (Ofcom). After the May 2026 elections, 64% of adults in the election areas preferred longer-form coverage such as articles and bulletins (Ofcom).
For UK children aged 12 to 15 (1,045 surveyed), TikTok is the biggest single news source. 78% saw news on social or video platforms in 2026 (Ofcom); TikTok reached 42% and YouTube 38% (Ofcom). On TikTok they were slightly more likely to see news from influencers or creators (46%) than from broadcasters (Ofcom), and only 45% of them trusted news there (Ofcom). In 2025, TikTok reached 31% of 12-to-15s for news (Ofcom) and 11% named it their most important source (Ofcom); TV's reach in that age group fell from 68% in 2018 to 51% in 2024 (Ofcom).
What about Europe, Australia and Canada?
In the EU, TV still leads but social video is climbing. In the European Parliament's Media & News Eurobarometer (25,956 people aged 15+, October 2023), 71% said TV was among the media they used most for news (European Parliament) and 37% used social media, up 11 points from 2022 (European Parliament). Trust in YouTube and other video platforms as a news source rose 4 points (European Parliament), though 48% still named public TV and radio among their most trusted sources (European Parliament). 79% of 15-to-24s followed influencers or content creators (European Parliament).
Among young Europeans, social media has passed TV. In the Parliament's 2024 youth survey (25,863 people aged 16 to 30), 42% named social media as their top source on political and social issues, ahead of TV at 39% (European Parliament). Instagram (47%) and TikTok (39%) were the most used platforms (European Parliament), and 16-to-18-year-olds relied on social media most (45%) (European Parliament). In the 2021 edition, social media and news websites tied at 41% (European Parliament).
In Australia, social media drew level with TV in 2026. In the University of Canberra's Digital News Report: Australia (2,025 people), 56% got news from social media, just behind TV at 57% (University of Canberra), and social media (32%) overtook direct visits to news sites as the main online pathway (University of Canberra). 48% of 18-to-24s got news from TikTok (University of Canberra), 43% of all adults got news from creators or influencers (University of Canberra), and only 21% trusted news on social media (University of Canberra). 9% used AI chatbots for news (University of Canberra). In 2025 social media (26%) overtook online news as a main source for the first time (University of Canberra); Instagram led among 18-to-24s at 40 per cent (University of Canberra), Facebook reached 38 per cent (University of Canberra), and 57 per cent rated online influencers a major misinformation threat (University of Canberra), and 57 per cent named TikTok among the platforms posing the biggest misinformation threat, after Facebook at 59 per cent (University of Canberra).
Canada shows what happens when a platform removes news. After Meta blocked news on Facebook and Instagram in August 2023, Canadian news outlets lost 85% of their engagement on those platforms, in the Media Ecosystem Observatory's count (Media Ecosystem Observatory), and 212 of 713 local outlets active on social media went inactive (Media Ecosystem Observatory). A year on, only 22% of Canadians knew news was blocked, and 36% of users still saw news there through workarounds such as screenshots (Media Ecosystem Observatory).
How many people get news from news influencers and creators?
About one in five U.S. adults, and close to two in five under 30. In Pew's August 2025 survey, 21% of U.S. adults regularly got news from news influencers, unchanged from 2024, including 38% of adults 18 to 29 (Pew Research Center). In 2024 the under-30 figure was 37% (Pew). Pew counts as a news influencer someone who regularly posts about current events and has at least 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube (Pew). Most of this is not sought out: 69% of those who get news from influencers mostly happen to come across it (Pew), and 52% said most of the influencers are independent of any news organization (Pew).
Pew's study of 500 influencers in 2024 shows who they are. 85% were on X, and 44% had a YouTube account (Pew). 77% had never worked for a news organization (Pew), 63% were men (Pew), and 59% made money from their following (Pew). On YouTube, 68% of their posts in summer 2024 discussed politics and the election (Pew).
Other U.S. surveys find more creator news because they ask more broadly. In the Media Insight Project's February 2026 survey (AP-NORC and the American Press Institute, 2,101 Americans aged 13+), 57% got at least some news from influencers or independent creators, rising to 81% of teens (Media Insight Project); 57% of teens got news from social media daily (Media Insight Project), and 48% of teens got local news from local creators (Media Insight Project). 50% of those who follow creators for news said transparency about sponsored content is very important to their trust (Media Insight Project).
Worldwide, the Reuters Institute found 27% got some news from news-focused creators in the past week and 46% from creators of any kind (Reuters Institute). For 13% of all respondents, creators met most or all of their news needs (Reuters Institute); only 3% said all (Reuters Institute). That ran from 33% in Kenya to about 15% in the U.S. (Reuters Institute), where about 15% relied mostly on creators (Reuters Institute). 18% of UK respondents saw a news creator weekly (Reuters Institute) and 33% in Brazil (Reuters Institute). In Thailand in 2025, 43% paid most attention to creators rather than news brands (Reuters Institute). In 2024, under-35s who use social media for news paid more attention to creators (48%) than to mainstream media (Reuters Institute).
Single creators now outreach national broadcasters. HugoDécrypte, who publishes on YouTube and TikTok, reached 28% of under-35s in France in 2026, twice as many as TF1 or Le Figaro, up from 22% in 2025 (Reuters Institute). In the week after the January 2025 inauguration, 22% of U.S. online respondents came across news or commentary from Joe Rogan and 14% from Tucker Carlson (Reuters Institute). In the Institute's 2025 mapping of the 15 most-mentioned news individuals in each of 24 countries, 85% were men (Reuters Institute).
Do people trust news on video platforms?
Less than they trust TV news. Across the Digital News Report 2026 markets, trust in news found on social media averaged 22%, against 37% for news overall (Reuters Institute); overall trust fell to 37%, the lowest since 2015 (Reuters Institute), and only 25% of U.S. respondents trusted most news most of the time (Reuters Institute). In the UK, 39% of those who saw news on social or video platforms rated it trustworthy (Ofcom), against 65% of broadcast TV news viewers (Ofcom). UK teens are the exception: 52% of 12-to-15s using social media for news found it trustworthy in 2025 (Ofcom).
Young Americans trust social media about as much as national news. In Pew's October 2025 data, 51% of adults under 30 trusted information from national news organizations at least some, and 50% from social media (Pew Research Center).
Concern about what is real is high, and highest in the U.S. 62% across the 2026 markets were concerned about fake news online (Reuters Institute), 77% in the UK (Reuters Institute). In 2025, 58% worried about telling real from fake news online (Reuters Institute), 73% in the United States (Reuters Institute); in 2024 the figures were 59% and 72% (Reuters Institute). Online influencers and personalities were named the biggest source of false or misleading information, by 47% (Reuters Institute). 27% of TikTok users said they struggle to tell trustworthy from untrustworthy news there, the most of any network (Reuters Institute). 42% sometimes or often avoid the news altogether (Reuters Institute).
Trust in U.S. media overall is near its low. In Gallup's September 2025 poll of 1,000 adults, 28% trusted the mass media a great deal or fair amount, a record low (Gallup), down from 31% in 2024 (Gallup); 34% had no trust at all (Gallup). When Gallup began asking in the 1970s, up to 72% did (Gallup). Republican trust hit 8% in 2025 (Gallup). Trust recovered to Thirty-three percent in September 2026 (Gallup), with 33% having no confidence at all (Gallup); Republicans rose to 22% (Gallup) while Democrats, at a peak of 76% in 2018, were at 50% (Gallup). Age matters: 43% of adults 65 and older trusted the media over 2023-2025, against no more than 28% in any younger group (Gallup), and only 38% of Democrats aged 18 to 29 did (Gallup).
In Gallup's May 2026 panel survey of 2,062 adults, 54% had got news from social media in the past week (Gallup), 7% relied on AI tools for news at least a fair amount (Gallup), and a 39% plurality said news organizations' use of AI would reduce their trust (Gallup). In the Knight Foundation and Gallup's 2023 study of about 5,600 adults, 44% had high emotional trust in local news against 21% for national news (Knight Foundation), and 26% viewed the news media favorably (Knight Foundation). In the Media Insight Project's 2026 survey, 66% blamed politicians for spreading misinformation (Media Insight Project).
Are news organizations making more video?
Yes, and mostly for YouTube. In the Reuters Institute's survey of 280 news leaders in 51 countries (November-December 2025, not a representative sample), 79% said it would be important to invest more in video in 2026 (Reuters Institute). YouTube was their top off-platform priority with a net score of +74 (Reuters Institute), followed by TikTok at +56 and Instagram at +41 (Reuters Institute). 76% planned to get their staff to behave more like creators (Reuters Institute), 50% planned creator partnerships (Reuters Institute), and 39% worried about losing talent to the creator economy (Reuters Institute).
How much local TV news do U.S. broadcasters make?
Thousands of hours a week, from a few large groups, in their fiscal 2025 10-K filings. Sinclair produces more than 2,300 hours of news a week at 106 stations, down from more than 2,400 at 115 stations in its fiscal 2023 report (Sinclair 10-K). TEGNA produces more than 1,700 hours of local news a week (TEGNA 10-K). Nexstar employs about 6,000 journalists and produces over 317,000 hours of programming a year (Nexstar 10-K), up from 310,000 (Nexstar 10-K).
A few owners reach most of the country. Nexstar's stations reach about 70% of U.S. TV households (Nexstar 10-K), TEGNA's 39% (TEGNA 10-K), Gray's 37% (Gray Media 10-K), up from 36 percent (Gray 10-K), and Scripps' 25% (Scripps 10-K). Sinclair runs 179 stations in 81 markets (Sinclair 10-K); with the FCC's UHF discount its counted reach is 23% (Sinclair 10-K). Northwestern Medill's 2026 report, its first count of local commercial TV found 678 newsrooms (Medill), with the 10 largest owners controlling 75% (Medill); all but two of the 210 Nielsen markets have at least one (Medill), and more than 95% sit in metropolitan counties (Medill). Pew counted 842 news-producing local stations in 2022 data (Pew Research Center), and local TV over-the-air ad revenue was $20.5 billion in that election year (Pew).
Their money comes increasingly from fees, not ads. Retransmission fees were $1,429 million, 46% of Gray's 2025 revenue, against core advertising of $1,452 million (Gray Media 10-K). Nexstar earned $2,924 million in distribution revenue (Nexstar 10-K), Sinclair's local segment $1,529 million (Sinclair 10-K), TEGNA $1,465,603 thousand (TEGNA 10-K) and Scripps $748,492 thousand (Scripps 10-K). Local programming still sells the ads: 68% of Nexstar's advertising came from local programming (Nexstar 10-K), and 58% of Sinclair's net time sales were local (Sinclair 10-K). Core advertising was 42% of Scripps' local revenue (Scripps 10-K), and automotive supplied 17% of Gray's (Gray Media 10-K). Employee costs were 37% of Scripps' local costs (Scripps 10-K).
Broadcasters now chase viewers off the antenna. TEGNA says only 15 to 18% of households depend on over-the-air TV (TEGNA 10-K), and claims over 100 million people a month across broadcast, streaming, apps and social (TEGNA 10-K). Its Premion streaming-ad business runs in all 210 markets (TEGNA 10-K), and its Daily Blast LIVE, in its fiscal 2023 report, streamed up to 5 hours of news a day on YouTube, Twitch and other platforms (TEGNA 10-K). Nexstar's digital properties drew over 90 million monthly users (Nexstar 10-K) and it runs 110 streaming channels and apps alongside its websites (Nexstar 10-K). Scripps took its national news channel off the air in November 2024; it is now streaming-only (Scripps 10-K). Gray's Telemundo group serves over 1.6 million Hispanic TV households (Gray Media 10-K). Sinclair stations won 246 journalism awards in 2025 (Sinclair 10-K) and TEGNA six national Murrow awards (TEGNA 10-K).
What do national news companies report?
Cable news is shrinking in distribution while digital subscriptions grow. Fox News was carried in about 55 million U.S. pay-TV households at June 30, 2026, down from 61 million a year earlier (Fox Corporation 10-K) and 67 million in 2024 (Fox 10-K), a 9.8% drop in the latest year. It has been the top-rated cable news channel for over 24 years (Fox 10-K). Fox's cable segment earned $4,662 million in distribution revenue (Fox 10-K), and its free streaming service Tubi streamed over 13 billion hours, up from 9.7 billion two years earlier (Fox 10-K). NewsNation reaches about 58 million households, down from 69 million (Nexstar 10-K), after going to 24 hours of news in 2024 (Nexstar 10-K). MS NOW and CNBC each reach about 59 million households (Versant 10-K). CNN launched its All Access subscription in October 2025 (Warner Bros. Discovery 10-K).
Text-first publishers are growing through digital subscriptions. The New York Times had about 12.21 million digital-only subscribers at the end of 2025, up from 9.70 million two years earlier (New York Times Co. 10-K), a 25.9% rise, and aims for 15 million total by 2027 (NYT 10-K). Its digital subscription revenue was $1,434,336 thousand (NYT 10-K), and it has more than 3,000 people in journalism (NYT 10-K). In the quarter to June 30, 2026, the Wall Street Journal averaged 4,465 thousand digital-only subscriptions (News Corp 10-K), with 72% of visits on mobile (News Corp 10-K). USA TODAY Co. has about 2,500 journalists (USA TODAY Co. 10-K) in about 215 local markets (USA TODAY Co. 10-K), with digital at 46% of revenue (USA TODAY Co. 10-K). Lee Enterprises has 633,000 digital-only subscribers (Lee Enterprises 10-K), digital at 53.0% of revenue (Lee 10-K) and digital subscription revenue of $94,242 thousand (Lee 10-K).
How many people make news video in the U.S.?
TV stations employ about 64,000 people, and newspapers have lost three-quarters of their jobs since 2008. In BLS's Current Employment Statistics, U.S. TV stations averaged 63.6 thousand jobs in 2025, against 68.7 thousand in 2008 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), a 7.4% fall. Newspaper publishers fell from 325.5 thousand to 83.4 thousand over the same years (BLS), a 74.4% fall in the same survey. QCEW counts 63,220 employees at private TV stations in 2025 (BLS QCEW), down 5.1% in a year (BLS QCEW), and 82,504 at newspaper publishers (BLS QCEW), against 201,794 in 2014 (BLS QCEW).
In the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, there were 39,250 news analysts, reporters and journalists (BLS), with a median wage of 62,200 dollars and a mean of 102,460 (BLS). Film and video editors numbered 25,610 across all industries (BLS), median 75,420 and mean 86,130 dollars (BLS); camera operators 21,550 (BLS), median 74,990 (BLS); broadcast technicians 21,110 (BLS), median 59,570 (BLS); producers and directors 143,120 (BLS), median 90,360 (BLS). These counts exclude the self-employed.
At U.S. TV stations (NAICS 516120), May 2025
Jobs
Median wage
All occupations
64,950
$64,170
Producers and directors
13,250
$65,230
News analysts, reporters and journalists
8,610
$64,150
Broadcast technicians
4,980
–
Camera operators
2,250
–
Film and video editors
840
–
Source: BLS OEWS, industry-specific estimates. TV stations employ about 10.2 reporters for every film and video editor on staff, in our calculation; much editing at stations is done by reporters, producers and photographers themselves. At newspaper publishers in May 2025 there were 13,290 reporters, median $49,220 (BLS).
BLS projects reporter jobs to shrink and editor jobs to grow. Its 2025-35 projections, which count the self-employed and so start from higher bases than OEWS, put news analysts, reporters and journalists at -5.9% (BLS Employment Projections), still with about 3,400 openings a year (BLS), film and video editors at 3.7% (BLS), camera operators at 1.3% (BLS), broadcast technicians at -3.1% (BLS) and producers and directors at 4.0% (BLS). Reporter jobs at newspapers are projected to fall -22.7% (BLS) while those at streaming services and social networks rise +5.8% (BLS); total TV station jobs fall -4.8% (BLS), broadcast technicians there -7.6% (BLS) and camera operators -6.7% (BLS). Producers and directors are the largest occupation at TV stations, 20.4% of jobs (BLS). 18% of the 47,100 reporter jobs in 2025 were at TV stations, 28% at newspapers and 21% at streaming services and social networks (BLS). The Occupational Outlook Handbook combines editors with camera operators: 72,000 jobs (BLS), and 35% of editor jobs are self-employed (BLS).
How many TV stations and local newsrooms are there?
The FCC counted 1,777 licensed full-power TV stations at June 30, 2026 (Federal Communications Commission): 1,041 UHF and 349 VHF commercial stations (FCC) and 270 UHF and 117 VHF educational ones (FCC), plus 397 Class A (FCC) and 1,772 low-power stations (FCC). The 2022 Economic Census counted 1,207 TV station establishments owned by 413 firms (U.S. Census Bureau), with 58,106 employees (Census) and 4,657,737 thousand dollars in payroll (Census); the four largest firms took 73.6% of receipts (Census). There were 6,589 newspaper publisher establishments (Census). County Business Patterns shows newspaper employment falling from 346,373 in 2008 to 91,350 in 2023 (Census); TV broadcasting under the older, wider industry code (stations plus networks) had 142,225 employees in 2023 (Census).
Local news is thinning out where TV is not. Medill's State of Local News 2026 counts 238 U.S. counties with no local news source, up 26 in a year (Medill), up from 213 in 2025 (Medill); nearly 47 million Americans have limited or no local news (Medill), and 170 newspapers closed or merged in the year (Medill). Traffic to the largest local news sites fell 50% since 2022, in Comscore data cited by Medill (Medill). More than 100 public TV stations produce local reporting (Medill). In Medill's Chicago survey, close to half of younger residents got local news from content creators daily (Medill).
What do the platforms say about news?
Meta has pulled back from news. Meta said in February 2024 that news makes up less than 3% of what people see in their Facebook feed worldwide (Meta), and that use of the Facebook News tab in the U.S. and Australia fell by over 80% in 2023 (Meta). It deprecated the tab there in early April 2024 (Meta), after its news deals in the US and the UK had already expired (Meta). In Canada it began removing news for everyone on 1 August 2023 to comply with the Online News Act (Meta), and valued its free tools for Canadian publishers at more than C$230 million a year, its own estimate (Meta). In January 2025 Meta ended the U.S. third-party fact-checking program it launched in 2016 (Meta), which had more than 90 partners in 2023 (Meta), and began phasing civic content back into feeds after cutting it since 2021 (Meta).
Meta's own feed data shows how little news is left. In its Widely Viewed Content Report for U.S. Facebook Feed, posts with outside links took 12.9% of content views in Q2 2021, 3.5% in Q1 2024, 2.1% in Q4 2024 and 2.2% in Q2 2025 (Meta), an 83% fall. News domains among the 20 most-viewed domains took about 0.3% of views in 2021, 0.2% in Q1 2024, 0.1% in Q4 2024 and 0.3% in Q2 2025 (Meta).
Source: Meta, Widely Viewed Content Report (Internet Archive captures). The worldwide "less than 3%" and these U.S. figures measure different things and should not be compared.
Google and YouTube pay into news. Google committed $300 million over three years when it launched the Google News Initiative in March 2018 (Google), and said it drove 10 billion clicks a month to publishers in 2017 (Google). The initiative's own pages disagree on the running total: more than $550 million on its About page (Google News Initiative) and $300M+ on its homepage (Google News Initiative). Its 2020 emergency fund supported 5,600+ local newsrooms (Google), and News Showcase launched with a $1 billion commitment (Google). YouTube committed $25 million to news in July 2018 (YouTube), when its Top News and Breaking News shelves ran in 17 countries (YouTube), over 100 publishers used its Player for Publishers (YouTube), and it planned funding in approximately 20 markets (YouTube). Its Shorts Innovation Program for News started in October 2023 with $1.6 million for over 20 news organizations (YouTube), alongside a news watch page in approximately 40 countries (YouTube). In Canada, Google said it linked to Canadian news more than 3.6 billion times in a year (Google) and had News Showcase deals with over 150 publications (Google); the CRTC exempted it in exchange for C$100 million a year (CRTC).
The platforms also remove news-adjacent video at scale. YouTube said in 2021 it removed nearly 10 million videos a quarter (YouTube), that violative content was 0.16-0.18% of views (YouTube), that over 77% of election-policy removals came before 100 views (YouTube), and that it had removed over 1 million dangerous COVID-19 videos (YouTube). TikTok removed 347,225 U.S. videos for election misinformation in the second half of 2020 (TikTok), made 441,028 ineligible for For You after fact-checks (TikTok), bannered 6,978,395 election videos (TikTok), removed 51,505 for COVID-19 misinformation (TikTok), and removed 89,132,938 videos in all (TikTok). Its fact-checking partners grew from 17 in January 2024 (TikTok) to 19 (TikTok); its Election Centers reached over 55 million people in 2023 (TikTok), its U.S. center was viewed more than 7 million times by September 2024 (TikTok), and it expected to spend more than $2 billion on trust and safety in 2024 (TikTok). It labels state-affiliated media in 40 more markets since 2023 (TikTok) and removed 3,001 accounts tied to 15 influence operations in early 2024 (TikTok). TikTok counts its U.S. users at 150M+ (January 2024) (TikTok) and 170M+ (September 2024) (TikTok). Apple News+ launched in 2019 with over 300 publications (Apple).
What does peer-reviewed research say about news video?
Video is more believable than text but barely more persuasive. In two preregistered experiments with 7,609 Americans shown 72 political clips as video, transcript or nothing, video raised belief that the event happened by 0.26 SD to 0.28 standard deviations more than text, but shifted attitudes by only 0.08 to 0.11 (PNAS, Wittenberg et al. 2021). The study was partly funded by Google's Jigsaw.
Most YouTube news viewing is mainstream, and the extreme corners are small and concentrated. In browser data from 1,181 U.S. participants in fall 2020, 43.5% watched at least one video from a mainstream news channel (Science Advances, Chen et al. 2023); only 3% of people not already subscribed to alternative or extremist channels reached one through a recommendation (Science Advances), and 1.7% of participants accounted for 80% of time on alternative channels (Science Advances). A sock-puppet audit found problematic-channel recommendations reached 36.1% of accounts while making up at most 2.5% of recommendations (PNAS, Haroon et al. 2023). Counterfactual bots showed YouTube's sidebar "forgets" a partisan preference within about 30 videos (PNAS, Hosseinmardi et al. 2024), and a month-long experiment with 2,142 frequent users found that playing news videos nudged the recommender toward more news (PNAS Nexus, Yu et al. 2024). Short YouTube "prebunking" videos tested on 19,735 people in 12 EU countries had small but significant effects on spotting manipulation (Communications Psychology, 2026).
What the popular news video numbers really say
Five news-video claims recur on marketing blogs, newsletters and statistics roundups. We traced each to the organization that produced it. Most started as a real survey figure about U.S. adults 18 to 29 that was later relabelled "Gen Z", rounded up, or detached from its year.
"40% of Gen Z use TikTok instead of Google" (often printed next to news figures)
It was never a news figure or a published study. Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan said in July 2022 that almost 40% of young people looking for a place for lunch go to TikTok or Instagram instead of Google Maps or Search (TechCrunch). Google told TechCrunch it came from an internal survey of U.S. users aged 18 to 24 and had not been made public (TechCrunch). Repeaters turn it into 40% choosing TikTok "as their primary search engine" (Spin Brands), 40% preferring TikTok over Google, placed beside news-use figures (Teleprompter.com), and 40% that "Google reported" (Axia Public Relations). Use instead: Pew's measured figure for news, below.
"X% of Gen Z get their news from TikTok"
The figures in circulation are Pew's, for U.S. adults aged 18 to 29, from different years. Pew found 32% in 2023, the "a third of young adults" version (Pew Research Center), 43% in 2025 (Pew), and 39% in August 2026 (Pew). MediaPost reported the 43% as a share of "younger social-media users" (43%) (MediaPost), and a student outlet still printed 43% in April 2026 (Aula News). A software blog prints 52% of U.S. TikTok users getting news there (Teleprompter.com), Pew's 2024 figure; it was 53% in 2026 (Pew). Use instead: 39% of U.S. adults 18 to 29 (August 2026), and say it is an age band, not a generation.
"More people get news on YouTube than on TV"
No large survey shows YouTube alone beating TV. The newest version is Syracuse University's Center for the Creator Economy flash report, as reported by Tubefilter: YouTube was the source named most often at 16.5%, against 16.1% for TV news (Tubefilter), from an opt-in online panel of 1,001 U.S. adults (Syracuse University), a gap well inside the margin of error. Pew puts YouTube second among U.S. adults at 34%, behind Facebook (Pew), and among 18-to-29s YouTube ties TikTok at 39, behind Instagram and Facebook (Pew). The real "beats TV" findings are about all online video or all social platforms: in the U.S., social and video networks reached 54% against 50% for TV news in 2025 (Reuters Institute); online news video beat TV news in 45 of 48 markets in 2026 (Reuters Institute), where YouTube alone reached 34% for news (Reuters Institute); and in the UK online news reached 71% against 70% for TV in 2024 (Ofcom), with 52% using social platforms (Ofcom). Use instead: "social and video platforms together now rival TV".
"Half of Gen Z get news from influencers, not news outlets"
Pew's figure is about one in five adults and about two in five under 30. Its 2024 survey of 10,658 U.S. adults found 21% regularly get news from news influencers (Pew), and the 2025 survey gave 21% again and 38% of 18-to-29s (Pew). A creator newsletter headlined it as Half of Gen Z getting news from influencers "not news outlets", while citing 38% in its body; Pew did not ask about replacing outlets (#TheAlpha newsletter). The American Prospect's 40 percent is a fair rounding (The American Prospect). The Reuters Institute's 27% uses a different, worldwide question (Reuters Institute). Use instead: 21% of U.S. adults and 38% of 18-to-29s (2025).
"Most Americans now get their news from social media" and "people prefer watching news"
Both overstate what was measured. Al Jazeera's headline (Most) rests on the Reuters Institute's 54% who used social or video networks for news in the past week, not a main source (Al Jazeera). Pew's "often or sometimes" figure was 54% in 2024 and 53% in 2025 (Pew), and 59% in 2026 (Pew); in a June 2026 Pew survey 58% called social media an important way to keep up (Pew). The "prefer watching" line, 47% in a newsroom-software vendor's blog (Eidosmedia), is Pew's 2018 survey, where 47% preferred to watch and about three-quarters of them meant TV (Pew). For online news the preference runs the other way: 55% preferred to read in the Reuters Institute's 2025 survey (Reuters Institute).
We started from the questions people search for about news video statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 458 figures from 45 publishers.
On October 31 and November 1, 2026, each of the sourced figures on this page was re-fetched with the fetch cache cleared and matched against the recorded wording: Pew Research Center's fact sheets and reports; the Reuters Institute's Digital News Reports 2024-2026, its news-leaders survey and its news-creators mapping; Ofcom's News Reports 2024-2026 (through Internet Archive captures, because ofcom.org.uk refuses scripts); the European Parliament's Eurobarometer releases; the University of Canberra's Digital News Report: Australia releases; Gallup, the Knight Foundation, the Media Insight Project and Northwestern Medill; the latest 10-K filings of Gray, Nexstar, Sinclair, TEGNA, Scripps, Fox, The New York Times Company, News Corp, USA TODAY Co., Lee, Warner Bros. Discovery and Versant on EDGAR; BLS's OEWS, Employment Projections, CES and QCEW data, the FCC's broadcast station totals and the Census Bureau's Economic Census and County Business Patterns; Meta's, Google's, YouTube's, TikTok's and Apple's own pages; peer-reviewed articles through their abstracts or full text; and the original pages behind each popular claim. Our own figures come from a headless-browser read of the homepages of the 300 highest-ranked news domains in the Tranco top 100,000 (news outlets identified through Wikidata) on October 31 and November 1, 2026, with a hand check. We left out Edelman's Trust Barometer (its pages refuse scripts), the European Commission's 2025 social media Eurobarometer (its official text was not readable), and TikTok's recent misinformation removal counts, which its transparency site shows only to a full browser.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
Surveys differ in country, age band, question and year. Pew asks U.S. adults whether they "regularly" get news on a platform; the Reuters Institute asks online samples in 48 markets about the past week; Ofcom asks about the past month. We keep each survey's population next to its figure; do not combine them.
Reuters Institute, Eurobarometer and Australian samples are online panels. They under-represent older and offline people, and some markets (India, Kenya, Nigeria) represent younger, English-speaking users. Ofcom changed its method in 2025, and the Reuters Institute re-asked its 2026 platform questions separately, so year-on-year comparisons across those breaks are approximate.
Company figures are self-reported. Broadcasters' household reach, news hours and audience claims, and the platforms' removal and funding figures, come from the companies themselves. Removal counts are often old: TikTok's most detailed public election figures are from 2020.
Government job counts miss freelancers. OEWS counts wage-and-salary jobs only; the projections include the self-employed, so the two series start from different bases.
Our homepage read sees one visit. Video that loads only after a click or a scroll, or behind a consent wall the crawler did not dismiss, is missed; video ad players are counted as video. 42 of the 300 sites, including several of the largest U.S. and UK publishers, refused automated browsers or disallowed crawling, so the readable sample under-represents them. Our hand check confirmed 26 of 30 flagged sites (five showing only a video ad) and found 2 misses among 15 unflagged ones.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/news-video-statistics#DRV-009. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "News Video Statistics." Last verified Oct 31, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/news-video-statistics
APA
Mark Studios. (2026, October 31). News video statistics. https://www.markstudios.com/research/news-video-statistics
MLA
“News Video Statistics.” Mark Studios, 31 Oct. 2026, www.markstudios.com/research/news-video-statistics.
Chicago
Mark Studios. “News Video Statistics.” Last modified October 31, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/news-video-statistics.
BibTeX
@misc{markstudios_news_video_statistics_2026,
author = {{Mark Studios}},
title = {{News Video Statistics}},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
url = {https://www.markstudios.com/research/news-video-statistics},
note = {Last verified 2026-10-31}
}
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is January 2027. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
Oct 31, 2026: First published with 458 figures from 45 publishers, each checked against its original source.
Frequently asked questions
How many news websites use video on their homepage?
Fewer than half of the biggest. In our read of October 31-November 1, 2026, 41.5% of the 258 most-visited news homepages we read showed a video player, counting video ad players, and 13.2% showed vertical video. 43.8% linked to a YouTube account.
What percentage of people get news from YouTube?
In the U.S., 34% of adults regularly got news on YouTube in August 2026, in Pew's survey of 5,166 adults. Across 48 markets, the Reuters Institute found 34% used YouTube for news weekly in 2026.
How many people get their news from TikTok?
20% of U.S. adults regularly got news on TikTok in 2025, up from 3% in 2020, and 39% of adults 18 to 29 did in August 2026. 53% of U.S. TikTok users regularly get news there.
Do more people watch news online or on TV?
Online, in most countries. The Reuters Institute found more people watch online news video than broadcast TV news in 45 of 48 markets in 2026. In the U.S., 63% of adults still get news from TV at least sometimes, against 88% from digital devices.
How many Americans get news from news influencers?
21% of U.S. adults regularly got news from news influencers in Pew's 2025 survey, including 38% of adults 18 to 29. 77% of the influencers Pew studied in 2024 had never worked for a news organization.
Do people prefer short or long news videos?
It depends on the platform. 55% of people who watch news video on TikTok watch clips under two minutes, while 23% of YouTube news watchers watch videos longer than 20 minutes weekly (Reuters Institute, 2026).
Do people trust news on social media?
Less than other news. Trust in news on social media averaged 22% across 48 markets in 2026, against 37% for news overall.
Is it true that 40% of Gen Z use TikTok instead of Google?
No published study says so. A Google executive said in July 2022 that almost 40% of young people looking for a place for lunch go to TikTok or Instagram, from an unpublished internal survey of U.S. users aged 18 to 24.
