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America is learning to rebalance its news diet post-Trump

07 March 2021
 Dan Ackermann

Nearly halfway through President Biden's first 100 days, data shows that Americans are learning to wean themselves off of news — and especially politics.

Why it matters: The departure of former President Trump's once-ubiquitous presence in the news cycle has reoriented the country's attention.

Driving the news: Nearly every big news site saw its traffic decline in February, compared to a tumultuous January that included the Capitol insurrection and Biden's inauguration.

  • Publishers' traffic was down across the board, and many major sites saw traffic dip more than 20%, according to data from traffic analytics company SimilarWeb.
  • Politics consumption dropped most dramatically, tumbling 28%.

Between the lines: Interest in the presidency, specifically, has taken a steep plunge.

  • There were three times as many stories written about about Trump in February of 2017 than about Biden last month, according to data from NewsWhip.
  • Biden was discussed on cable news for an estimated 1,836 minutes last month, according to the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer. In February of Trump's first year, he commanded an estimated 4,669 minutes on cable news.

Other stories — including GameStop stock and developments on the coronavirus vaccines — have driven higher interest than they could in a Trump-centric world.

  • Interest in finance and business coverage declined from January to February, but not nearly as steeply as political coverage, and February's consumption trends were still higher than the average over the last three years.

What's next: These dynamics could change if Trump inserts himself back in the news cycle. Nearly 7 million people watched President Trump's speech at CPAC last Sunday, nearly rivaling the number of people that tuned into the Golden Globes later that evening.

  • Many of the pro-Trump sites that built massive audiences feeding false claims of a stolen election over the last few months are coming out of the Trump era with new and bigger audiences.
  • Newsmax's February traffic was lower than January's, but it was still up 179% compared to the daily average from the previous 3 years.
  • OANN jumped 157% and Gateway Pundit saw a 70% increase, per SimilarWeb. Data from Comscore shows similar trends.

The bottom line: News consumers have become desensitized to the level of drama they had come to expect from politics over the past four years.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.