About a quarter (26%) of U.S. adults now get their news from YouTube, Pew Research study finds. Is this the end of the mainstream media?

Is mainstream media still relevant? That’s the question most people are asking. For years, the mainstream media has maintained its monopoly on millions of Americans as a source of news. However, as the media split along political ideology, more Americans now view them as subjective and biased. As a result, a large portion of the population is going online to get their daily dose of news, which is unfortunately controlled by big tech companies.

One of the beneficiaries of this exodus is YouTube, a video platform owned by Google. According to a new study from the Pew Research Center, about a quarter of U.S. adults, or roughly 26%, say they get news by watching YouTube videos. Pew found that “Americans are as likely to often turn to independent channels as they are to established news organization channels; videos from independent news producers are more likely to cover subjects negatively, discuss conspiracy theories.”

The study, which examined the Google-owned video platform’s growing influence over news distribution in the U.S., as well as its consumption, found that established mainstream media and news organizations no longer have full control over the news Americans watch. According to the study, only one-in-five YouTube consumers (23%) said they “often” get their news from channels affiliated with established news organizations.