July 30, 2026

☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!

In today’s email:

• Featured story: The cyclospora outbreak and how Americans assess health information
• In other news: Polymarket partners with new media company
• Looking ahead: Are progressives moving away from legacy media?
• Chart of the week: ‘Doing your own research’ means different things to Americans

New reporting from The New York Times on the spread of information about the cyclospora outbreak is shedding light on how competing narratives and conspiracy theories can take off in online spaces such as social media. These include allegations about political ties between the Trump administration and Taylor Farms, the company whose products were linked to the pathogen by federal health officials.

Overall, half of Americans say it is at least somewhat difficult to judge the accuracy of health information, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey. But they assess information differently depending on the source.

Trust in health information from government health agencies is far from universal. Among the 76% of Americans who ever get health information from that source, 25% say it is extremely or very accurate, 55% say it is somewhat accurate, and 19% say it is not too or not at all accurate. But there is even less trust in health information from social media: Just 7% of those who ever get health information this way say it is extremely or very accurate, compared with 47% who say the information is not too or not at all accurate.

• Polymarket partners with new media company to provide news and analysis from prediction markets
• 60 Minutes hires New York Times’ Ross Douthat and other new contributors; former correspondent Cecilia Vega describes what she saw as political pressure from network
• The role of media in the protest movement among young people in India
• Is press freedom declining in Costa Rica?
• Justice Department withdraws subpoenas of New York Times reporters
• The Atlantic asks judge to dismiss FBI Director Kash Patel’s defamation lawsuit
• Trump delivers speech at rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner
• Paramount agrees to delay merger with Warner Bros. amid states’ lawsuit
• A look at public media funding one year after federal cuts
• How different newsrooms are using AI

👋 That’s all for this week.

The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Christopher St. Aubin, Emily Tomasik, Joanne Haner, and Sawyer Reed. It is edited by Michael Lipka and copy edited by David Kent.

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