Media

Poll: 2 in 3 Americans support COVID-19 relief funds for local news organizations

Roughly two-thirds of Americans support allocating coronavirus relief funds to local news organizations in the midst of the pandemic, according to a new Gallup poll

Sixty-five percent of adults surveyed supported providing the local outlets with stimulus funds, while 34 percent were opposed.

The results were split along partisan lines, with 87 percent of Democrats backing the idea but only 43 percent of Republicans agreeing. Independents supported giving news outlets money by a 60 percent to 39 percent margin. 

About 49 percent of those surveyed said they are either “very” or “moderately” concerned that local outlets will be harmed by the coronavirus’s mushrooming economic fallout, though most do not indicate a desire to pay for news coverage if they do not already. 

Local news outlets are not a top priority for those surveyed who, when provided with a hypothetical $10 million budget, on average granted 40 percent to local residents who lost their jobs, 34 percent to local businesses, 17 percent to local charities and 9 percent to local news outlets.

The poll comes as local news outlets struggle to fight through a stark drop in ad revenue. A number of newspapers and alt-weeklies have already announced pay cuts and layoffs, and some have shuttered their operations altogether. 

Existing problems in the local media industry have only been exacerbated as local restaurants, venues and other businesses scale back advertising as they close their own doors and as tech giants like Google and Facebook continue to dominate the digital advertising field.

Eighteen senators banded together last month to call for additional funds to be allocated to local news media outlets, warning that they are “in a state of crisis that has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“The current public health crisis has made the already vital role of local news even more critical,” they wrote.

The Gallup poll surveyed 1,693 adults from April 14-20 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.