BY DAVID BAUDER Published 5:18 AM EDT, August 31, 2022

NEW YORK (AP) — Young people are following the news but aren’t too happy with what they’re seeing.

Broadly speaking, that’s the conclusion of a study released Wednesday showing 79% of young Americans say they get news daily. The survey of young people ages 16 to 40 — the older of which are known as millennials and the younger Generation Z — was conducted by Media Insight Project, a collaboration between The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute.

The report pokes holes in the idea that young people aren’t interested in news, a perception largely driven by statistics showing older audiences for television news and newspapers.

“They are more engaged in more ways than people give them credit for,” said Michael Bolden, CEO and executive director of the American Press Institute.

An estimated 71% of this age group gets news daily from social media. The social media diet is becoming more varied; Facebook doesn’t dominate the way it used to. About a third or more get news each day from YouTube and Instagram, and about a quarter or more from TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter. Now, 40% say they get news from Facebook daily, compared with 57% of millennials who said that in a 2015 Media Insight Project survey.

Yet 45% also said they get news each day from traditional sources, like television or radio stations, newspapers and news websites.

The poll found that about a quarter of young people say they regularly pay for at least one news product, like print or digital magazines or newspapers, and a similar percentage have donated to at least one nonprofit news organization.

Only 32% say they enjoy following the news. That’s a marked decrease from seven years ago, when 53% of millennials said that. Fewer young people now say they enjoy talking with family and friends about the news.

Other findings, such as people who say they feel worse the longer they spend online or who set time limits on their consumption, point to a weariness with the news, said Tom Rosenstiel, a University of Maryland journalism professor.

“I wasn’t surprised by that,” Bolden said. “It has been a challenging news cycle, especially the last three years.”

About 9 in 10 young people say misinformation about issues and events is a problem, including about 6 in 10 who say it’s a major problem. Most say they’ve been exposed to misinformation themselves.

Asked who they consider most responsible for its spread, young people pointed to social media companies and users, politicians and the media in equal measure.

That may surprise people in the media who believe they are fighting misinformation, and are not part of the problem, Bolden said. A significant number of people disagree.

“Whether that’s accurate or not, the people in this business have to deal with that perception,” he said.

He suggested that it’s important for news organizations to better explain what it is that they do and how coverage decisions are made, along with taking a step back to make clear how government functions, as well as holding leaders to account.

The percentage of people who say “news stories that seem to mostly create conflict rather than help address it” and “media outlets that pass on conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated rumors” are a major problem exceeded the number of people concerned about journalists putting too much opinion in their stories, the survey found.

That would seem to point a finger at cable news outlets that fill air time with debates on particular issues, often pitting people with extreme points of view. New CNN chief executive Chris Licht has recently called on his network to cool the overheated segments.

“There are people who have grown up in this world of political food-fight media, and this is the only world they know,” said Rosenstiel, who worked on the survey as Bolden’s predecessor at the press institute. “They might have heard their parents talk about Walter Cronkite, but they haven’t seen that.”

The topics people ages 16 to 40 say they most follow in the news? Celebrities, music and entertainment, at 49%, and food and cooking, at 48%, top the list. At least a third follow a wide range of other issues, including health and fitness, race and social justice, the environment, health care, education, politics and sports.

The AP-NORC poll of 5,975 Americans ages 16-40 was conducted May 18-June 8, using a combined sample of interviews from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population, and interviews from opt-in online panels. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1.7 percentage points. The AmeriSpeak panel is recruited randomly using address-based sampling methods, and respondents later were interviewed online or by phone.

BY AMANDA SEITZ Published 8:18 AM EDT, September 12, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Emmanuel Obeng-Dankwa is worried about making rent on his New York City apartment, he sometimes holds off on filling his blood pressure medication.

“If there’s no money, I prefer to skip the medication to being homeless,” said Obeng-Dankwa, a 58-year-old security guard.

He is among a majority of adults in the U.S. who say that health care is not handled well in the country, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll reveals that public satisfaction with the U.S. health care system is remarkably low, with fewer than half of Americans saying it is generally handled well. Only 12% say it is handled extremely or very well. Americans have similar views about health care for older adults.

Overall, the public gives even lower marks for how prescription drug costs, the quality of care at nursing homes and mental health care are being handled, with just 6% or less saying those health services are done very well in the country.

“Navigating the American health care system is exceedingly frustrating,” said A. Mark Fendrick, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design. “The COVID pandemic has only made it worse.”

More than two years after the pandemic’s start, health care worker burnout and staffing shortages are plaguing hospitals around the country. And Americans are still having trouble getting in-person medical care after health centers introduced restrictions as COVID-19 killed and sickened millions of people around the country, Fendrick said.

In fact, the poll shows an overwhelming majority of Americans, nearly 8 in 10, say they are at least moderately concerned about getting access to quality health care when they need it.

Black and Hispanic adults in particular are resoundingly worried about health care access, with nearly 6 in 10 saying they are very or extremely concerned about getting good care. Fewer than half of white adults, 44%, expressed the same level of worry.

Racial disparities have long troubled America’s health care system. They have been abundantly clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Black and Hispanic people dying disproportionately from the virus. Black and Hispanic men also make up a disproportionately high rate of recent monkeypox infections.

Fifty-three percent of women said they are extremely or very concerned about obtaining quality care, compared to 42% of men.

While Americans are united in their dissatisfaction with the health care system, that agreement dissolves when it comes to solutions to fix it.

About two-thirds of adults think it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage, with adults ages 18 to 49 more likely than those over 50 to hold that view. The percentage of people who believe health care coverage is a government responsibility has risen in recent years, ticking up from 57% in 2019 and 62% in 2017.

Still, there’s not consensus on how that coverage might be delivered.

About 4 in 10 Americans say they support a single-payer health care system that would require Americans to get their health insurance from a government plan. More, 58%, say they favor a government health insurance plan that anyone can purchase.

There also is broad support for policies that would help Americans pay for the costs of long-term care, including a government-administered insurance plan similar to Medicare, the federal government’s health insurance for people 65 or older.

Retired nurse Pennie Wright, of Camden, Tennessee, doesn’t like the idea of a government-run health care system.

After switching to Medicare this year, she was surprised to walk out of her annual well-woman visit, once fully covered by her private insurance plan, with $200 worth of charges for a mammogram and a pap smear.

She prefers the flexibility she had on her private insurance plan.

“I feel like we have the best health care system in the world, we have a choice of where we want to go,” Wright said.

A majority of Americans, roughly two-thirds, were happy to see the government step in to provide free COVID-19 testing, vaccines and treatment. Roughly 2 in 10 were neutral about the government’s response.

The government’s funding for free COVID-19 tests dried up at the beginning of the month. And while the White House says the latest batch of recommended COVID-19 boosters will be free to anyone who wants one, it doesn’t have money on hand to buy any future rounds of booster shots for every American.

Eighty percent say they support the federal government negotiating for lower drug prices. President Joe Biden this summer signed a landmark bill into law allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. The move is expected to save taxpayers as much as $100 billion over the next decade.

“Medication costs should be low, to the minimum so that everyone can afford it,” said Obeng-Dankwa, the Bronx renter who has trouble paying for his medication. “Those who are poor should be able to get all the necessary health they need, in the same way someone who also has the money to pay for it.”

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AP polling reporter Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.

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The poll of 1,505 adults was conducted July 28-Aug. 1 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.

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Follow AP’s coverage of health care costs at https://apnews.com/hub/health-care-costs.

BY HANNAH FINGERHUT AND JOSH BOAK Published 9:40 AM EDT, September 15, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s popularity improved substantially from his lowest point this summer, but concerns about his handling of the economy persist, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Support for Biden recovered from a low of 36% in July to 45%, driven in large part by a rebound in support from Democrats just two months before the November midterm elections. During a few bleak summer months when gasoline prices peaked and lawmakers appeared deadlocked, the Democrats faced the possibility of blowout losses against Republicans.

Their outlook appears better after notching a string of legislative successes that left more Americans ready to judge the Democratic president on his preferred terms: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”

The president’s approval rating remains underwater, with 53% of U.S. adults disapproving of him, and the economy continues to be a weakness for Biden. Just 38% approve of his economic leadership as the country faces stubbornly high inflation and Republicans try to make household finances the axis of the upcoming vote.

Still, the poll suggests Biden and his fellow Democrats are gaining momentum right as generating voter enthusiasm and turnout takes precedence.

Average gas prices have tumbled 26% since June to $3.71 a gallon, reducing the pressure somewhat on family budgets even if inflation remains high. Congress also passed a pair of landmark bills in the past month that could reshape the economy and reduce carbon emissions.

Republicans have also faced resistance since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and its abortion protections. And Biden is openly casting former President Donald Trump as a fundamental threat to democracy, a charge that took on resonance after an FBI search of Trump’s Florida home found classified documents that belong to the U.S. government.

This combination of factors has won Biden some plaudits among the Democratic faithful, even if Americans still feel lukewarm about his leadership.

“I’m not under any belief that he’s the best person for the job — he’s the best from the people we had to choose from,” said Betty Bogacz, 74, a retiree from Portland, Oregon. “He represented stability, which I feel President Trump did not represent at all.”

Biden’s approval rating didn’t exceed 40% in May, June or July as inflation surged in the aftermath of Russia invading Ukraine. But his string of wins over the past month continued on Thursday, after the poll was conducted, when he announced a tentative deal between railways and unions that avoided a strike that could have shut down the railroads and devastated the economy.

The president’s rating now is similar to what it was throughout the first quarter of the year, but he continues to fall short of early highs. His average approval rating in AP-NORC polling through the first six months of his term was 60%.

Driving the recent increase in Biden’s popularity is renewed support among Democrats, who had shown signs of dejection in the early summer. Now, 78% of Democrats approve of Biden’s job performance, up from 65% in July. Sixty-six percent of Democrats approve of Biden on the economy, up from 54% in June.

Interviews suggest a big reason for Biden’s rebound is the reemergence of Trump on the national stage, causing voters such as Stephen Jablonsky, who labeled Biden as “OK,” to say voting Democratic is a must for the nation’s survival.

“The country has a political virus by the name of Donald Trump,” said Jablonsky, a retired music professor from Stamford, Connecticut. “We have a man who is psychotic and seems to have no concern for law and order and democracy. The Republican Party has gone to a place that is so unattractive and so dangerous, this coming election in November could be the last election we ever have.”

Republicans feel just as negative about Biden as they did before. Only about 1 in 10 Republicans approve of the president overall or on the economy, similar to ratings earlier this summer.

Christine Yannuzzi, 50, doubts that 79-year-old Biden has the capacity to lead.

“I don’t think he’s mentally, completely aware of everything that’s happening all the time,” said Yannuzzi, who lives in Binghamton, New York. “The economy’s doing super poorly and I have a hard time believing that the joblessness rate is as low as they say it is.”

“I think the middle class is being really phased out and families are working two and three jobs a person to make it,” the Republican added.

Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults say the economy is in good shape, while 71% say it’s doing poorly. In June, 20% said conditions were good and 79% said they were bad.

Democrats are more positive now than they were in June, 46% vs. 31%. Republicans remain largely negative, with only 10% saying conditions are good and 90% saying they’re bad.

About a quarter of Americans now say things in the country are headed in the right direction, 27%, up from 17% in July. Seventy-two percent say things are going in the wrong direction.

Close to half of Democrats — 44% — have an optimistic outlook, up from 27% in July. Just 9% of Republicans are optimistic about the nation’s direction.

Akila Atkins, a 27-year-old stay-at-home mom of two, thinks Biden is “OK” and doesn’t have much confidence that his solutions will curb rising prices.

Atkins says it’s gotten a little harder in the last year to manage her family’s expenses, and she’s frustrated that she can no longer rely on the expanded child tax credit. The tax credit paid out monthly was part of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package and has since lapsed.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that the expanded tax credit nearly halved the child poverty rate last year to 5.2%. Atkins said it helped them “stay afloat with bills, the kids’ clothing, shoes, school supplies, everything.”

Whatever misgivings the Democrat in Grand Forks, North Dakota, has about Biden, she believes he is preferable to Trump.

“I always feel like he could be better, but then again, he’s better than our last president,” she said.

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The poll of 1,054 adults was conducted Sep. 9-12 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of President Joe Biden at https://apnews.com/hub/joe-biden.

BY LUIS ANDRES HENAO Published 9:02 AM EDT, September 29, 2022

Across the ideological spectrum, there were predictions of dramatic consequences when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a public high school football coach’s right to pray on the field after games.

Yet three months after the decision — and well into the football season — there’s no sign that large numbers of coaches have been newly inspired to follow Joseph Kennedy’s high-profile example.

“I don’t think there has been a noticeable uptick in these sorts of situations,” said Chris Line, an attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates for the separation of church and state.

“But the real issue is not going to be the number, because there’s always going to be people like that who want to use their position to push religion on other people,” Line said. “The difference now is whether school districts are going to do the right thing about it.”

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 for Kennedy on June 27, saying the Washington state coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard-line. The conservative justices were in the majority and the liberals in dissent.

In a phone interview, Kennedy and his attorneys at First Liberty Institute, a Christian legal group, lauded the ruling. But the former assistant coach said he hasn’t seen “really any difference, good or bad” since June. As far as football games go, he said, “it seems to be pretty much the same.”

“I think everybody’s trying to figure out what’s next and especially at the high school level ’cause this came out right before the season,” he said.

A majority of U.S. adults approve of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The poll shows 54% of Americans approve of the ruling, while 22% disapprove and 23% hold neither opinion. The survey also shows that solid majorities think a coach leading a team in prayer (60%), a player leading a team in prayer (64%) and a coach praying on the field without asking the team to join in (71%) should all be allowed in public high school sports.

Kennedy began coaching at Bremerton High near Seattle in 2008. He initially prayed alone on the 50-yard line at the end of games. Students started joining him, and over time he began delivering short, inspirational talks with religious references. Kennedy did that for years and also led students in locker room prayers. When the school district learned what he was doing in 2015, it asked him to stop out of concerns of a possible lawsuit over students’ religious freedom rights.

Kennedy stopped leading prayers in the locker room and on the field, but wanted to continue kneeling and praying on the field after games. The school asked him not to do so while still “on duty” as a coach. When he continued, it put him on paid leave. The head coach of the varsity team later recommended he not be rehired because, among other things, he failed to follow district policy.

The case forced the justices to wrestle with how to balance the religious and free speech rights of teachers and coaches with the rights of students not to feel pressured into participating in religious practices. The liberal justices in the minority said there was evidence that the midfield prayers had a coercive effect on students and allowed Kennedy to incorporate his “personal religious beliefs into a school event.”

“The biggest mistake that happened out of the Kennedy decision was that the Supreme Court justices focused so much on the coach’s rights … and they just completely disregarded the view of students,” said Line, of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Since the ruling, Line’s group has received some prayer-related complaints, including one about a North Carolina coach holding a prayer service and a baptism on the field, and several about pregame prayers over public address systems at high schools in Alabama. Line is convinced that more coaches previously cautious about team prayers will be emboldened to emulate Kennedy.

“That’s definitely going to happen. I just don’t know how widespread it will be,” Line said. “In the past, school districts, I think, felt a lot more comfortable to say, ‘Hey, knock it off.’ And now some school districts may misinterpret this and be afraid to protect their students.”

John Bursch, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, praised the high court’s ruling.

“I don’t think that in the months since the decision that there’s been much conflict in the public square other than by those who want to completely eliminate prayer and religion from the public square altogether,” Bursch said.

Rachel Laser is president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented the Bremerton school board in the case. She lamented that the Supreme Court “adopted the deceitful narrative that Kennedy was praying quietly and to himself.” She also worried that it will encourage other coaches and teachers “who view public schools as a mission field.”

Laser said it’s too early to assess the ruling’s impact, and suggested some students may be fearful of speaking up.

“We won’t get reports of every case like this because it takes a lot of courage even to file a report online, let alone to pursue it,” she said. “Our plaintiffs have had their windows shot through, their pets killed, received death threats and have been ostracized in their community — the full gamut of terrible things.”

Some public school coaches in Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee acknowledged feeling vindicated by the ruling and said they would continue to pray with students, but declined to be identified publicly because they didn’t want to draw attention to their teams.

Others worry the ruling could have a negative impact.

Steve Sell, longtime athletic director and football coach at Aragon High School in San Mateo, California, said athletes competing for playing time could feel pressured to pray to please their coach.

“It’s dangerous,” Sell said. “I don’t like any situation that puts kids in a situation where they really have to make that hard choice or they have to choose between going against their personal beliefs and jeopardizing whatever position they have on the team.”

In the highly diverse San Francisco Bay Area, he said, “there’s a strong likelihood that on a given team you could have three or four different religions.” For a coach to presume all their players not only are religious but worship the same God, he added, is “not the case, and it’s something that has no place in our public education.”

Meanwhile, Kennedy, who has not returned to coaching yet, said he has received support from peers across the country.

“One thing they don’t want to do is walk on eggshells and people having to hide their faith or their practices,” he said. “You got enough things to think about. The last thing they should be thinking about is, ‘Are my rights being infringed on?’”

“It was really great to have hundreds of coaches just say, ‘Dude, we did it!’ And it was like a big group effort,” Kennedy added. “And a lot of people prayed for this to happen. And it just shows that the Constitution is alive and well.”

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Associated Press writer Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

BY HOLLY MEYER Published 9:01 AM EDT, September 30, 2022

Dolores Mejia thought the Chicago Bears could use a Hail Mary.

In fact, she said the prayer several times as she watched the 1986 Super Bowl, pairing the intercession to the Holy Mother with two other rosary staples — the Our Father and the Glory Be — before her team defeated the New England Patriots 46-10 and took home their first and only Vince Lombardi Trophy.

“I was ecstatic, but I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

While appeals to the divine are not a fundamental part of most sports fans’ playbooks, Mejia and others like her believe prayer has the power to influence who goes home the victor. About 3 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe it can play a role in determining who wins a sporting event, and a similar percentage say God plays a role, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Among fans of professional sports, 23% say they have prayed about the outcome of a contest, according to the poll. Religious background is a factor: 35% of evangelical fans say they have done so, compared with 21% of fans of other religious faiths. But professional sports fans don’t have to believe to pray. The poll shows that 15% of nonreligious fans say they too have prayed for the outcome of a game.

Mejia, a 73-year-old Catholic and Chicago native now living in Peoria, Arizona, said prayer has been second nature since childhood, and when a game or life gets tense, it can help calm her nerves.

But she has been disappointed often. Today Mejia, who is not a regular at Mass, has stopped praying for the Bears altogether, focusing her appeals to God instead on friends with serious health problems. “The Bears have been doing so terribly. … I just think we’re not meant to win,” she said.

Still, she believes that on that January day in 1986, her Super Bowl prayers were answered.

Does that mean God is a Bears fan? Or favors any other team?

“I really don’t think God cares who wins,” said the Rev. Burke Masters, a Catholic priest who celebrates Mass for players and staff as chaplain for the Chicago Cubs.

During the team’s historic 2016 championship run, he was put on the spot to offer a blessing on live TV, prompting him to pray for God to keep the players safe. The Cubs would go on to end a 108-year championship drought — and finally broke what some believed was a curse brought on by a Chicago tavern owner’s pet billy goat.

“Do people pray? Absolutely. I think a lot of people pray. But I think some of it is superstition as well,” said Masters, who used to play the game in college and the minor leagues. “Baseball players especially are superstitious. … I’ve been to people’s homes where they say, ‘Things are going well. Don’t move.’”

From lucky socks to playoff beards, ritualistic acts are entrenched in sports culture. And some think they are effective. About a quarter of U.S. adults say superstitions or rituals can play a role in who wins a sporting event, according to the AP-NORC poll.

The frequency of prayer is similar for games below the ranks of pro sports: 23% of fans of high school or college sports say they pray about the outcome of those games. Prayer is somewhat more common among parents with school-age children, however, with a third praying about their kids’ sporting events.

One who does pray about high school football is Daina Patton, a passionate fan of the Odessa High Bronchos. She’s in good company in Odessa, Texas, a city so enthusiastic for the sport that it was made famous by the book “Friday Night Lights” and a film and TV series by the same name.

Patton, a 32-year-old member of a Baptist church who does not attend services regularly, prays with her children every night and believes prayer can influence the outcome of a contest. But that’s not her only motive.

“It’s more than just winning the game, because of course we don’t want to be greedy,” Patton said. She prays the players don’t get hurt and that they get through high school, make good grades and stay good kids.

“That’s what our prayer is — it’s hope for us,” she said.

Rashed Fakhruddin prays religiously for his Nashville sports teams: the Tennessee Titans, Nashville SC and Vanderbilt’s baseball team.

As a season ticket holder and a Muslim, it’s inevitable that he needs to do one of his five daily prayers while at a stadium. Fakhruddin, a longtime leader at the Islamic Center of Nashville, pops into designated meditation rooms and moves through the ritual: “The prayers will vary. I’ll say, ‘Oh God, let Vanderbilt win.’ Sometimes I’ll just skip ahead and say, ‘Oh God, let Vanderbilt win the College World Series.’”

Not all of his requests are for wins. “There’s the prayer that once your team doesn’t make it or the Titans blow it against the Bengals with three interceptions … then you start thinking, ‘Oh God, get me through this hardship because I’m a suffering as a fan,’” he said.

Sportsmanship is important from a faith perspective because it teaches values like discipline, said the Rev. David Boettner, rector of the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Knoxville, Tennessee. He pointed to Saint Paul using the image of an athlete “to encourage people to run the good race, to fight the good fight.”

But Boettner, who is a Tennessee Volunteers fan and the priest of the head coach and athletic director, does not believe God wants to influence the outcome of a game. That includes the Vols’ victory over Florida last Saturday on their home turf at Neyland Stadium, a 38-33 nail-biter that snapped a six-game losing streak to their rivals and ended, fittingly enough, on a failed Hail Mary by the Gators.

“I think God values our freedom too much to intervene in a way like that. But is God going to enjoy a good football game? I’d like to think so,” Boettner said. Jesus, he noted, liked being social.

“I could very much see Jesus sitting in Neyland Stadium watching a great game and cheering, but not manipulating the outcome.”

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The poll of 1,054 adults was conducted Sep. 9-12 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.