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1 (2021-2022)

handle is hein.comprint/jscfrsmc0016 and id is 1 raw text is: MEMORANDUM To: Members of the Select Committee Fr: Select Committee Data Analysts Re: Legacy Media Dt: December 3, 2022 Introduction Cable and broadcast news dominate American news sources. According to a YouGov poll' broadcast news and cable news are used weekly by 39% of Americans. More Americans are likely to have watched broadcast news or cable news (or interacted with one of these channel's websites) each week than any other news source including social media, newspapers or their websites, YouTube, podcasts, or other websites. National news sources focused heavily on the 2020 election in the months surrounding it. With national news touching so many Americans and having such potential to impact on Americans' beliefs and actions, understanding what the national news reported (or didn't report) and how it was communicated is impactful for understanding the cultural context that allowed the January 6th riots to happen. Analysis Select Committee data analysts modeled the news between 2020-11-09, the Monday after the election, through 2021-01-05, the day before the January 6th riot. The staff gathered transcripts of primetime news programs from three of the major cable news networks: CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. This only included weeknight programs aired from 6 pm to 10:59 pm ET. Using these transcripts, the staff built a topic model that identified 50 topics.2 This approach used the statistical results of the model to identify broad trends over time and between networks, then identified top hits by network for each topic and provided a detailed analysis on how networks differ in their presentation of the news. 1 Linley Sanders, Trust in Media 2022: Where Americans get their news and who they trust for information, YouGov America, (Apr. 5, 2022), available at https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles- reports/2022/04/05/trust-media-2022-where-americans-get-news-poll. 2 Lin Liu, Lin Tang, Wen Dong, Shaowen Yao, and Wei Zhou, An overview of topic modeling and its current applications in bioinformatics, SpringerPlus, Vol. 5.1, (2016), available at https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40064-016-3252-8. 1 AUTHENTICATED u.s. GOVERNMENT INFORMATION GPO

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