Leading news websites in the U.S. 2021, by monthly visits

In July 2021, the news website with the most monthly visits in the United States was CNN's site, with a total of 411.72 million monthly visits to cnn.com in that month. In second place was foxnews.com with just over 274 million visits, followed by nytimes.com with 261.54 million.

Online news consumption in the U.S.

Americans get their news in a variety of ways, but social media is an increasingly popular option. A survey on social media news consumption revealed that 55 percent of Twitter users regularly used the site for news, and Facebook and Reddit were also popular for news among their users.

Social media is, however, the least trusted news sources in the United States. There are many reasons why consumers may continue to use social media for news despite concerns about reliability. It is possible for example that many consumers get their news passively on social networks whilst scrolling through other content, rather than actively seeking updates on such sites. The key takeaway from this, though, is that social media news consumption is high, whereas printed newspapers have long since fallen into decline when it comes to both popularity and circulation.

Do people trust news?

Trust in news sources has become increasingly important to the American news consumer amidst the spread of fake news, and the public are more vocal about whether or not they have faith in a source to report news correctly. Ongoing discussions about the credibility, accuracy and bias of news networks, anchors, TV show hosts, and news media professionals mean that those looking to keep up to date tend to be more cautious than ever before. In general, news audiences are skeptical. In 2020, just nine percent of respondents to a survey investigating the perceived objectivity of the mass media reported having a great deal of trust in the media to report news fully, accurately, and fairly.