Even on quiet summer weekends, huge news reaches millions of people faster than ever before

James Peeler’s phone exploded with messages as he drove home from church in Texas. Wendy Schweiger was reading a book on the couch in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when she spotted something on Facebook. Matti Niiranen clicked on a live CNN feed after finishing a night swim in the Baltic Sea off Finland.

Both learned that President Joe Biden had withdrawn his re-election bid minutes after he posted an unannounced statement online one summer Sunday.

Eight days after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, it was the second straight weekend in July in which a shocking American story broke at a time when most people weren’t paying attention to the news. Biden’s announcement was a shocking example of how quickly and how far news travels in today’s ever-connected world.

“It seemed like a third of the nation knew about it right away,” said Bill Wheatley, a longtime news executive, “and they told another third.”

Wheatley, now retired and spending his summers in Maine, sat down to check his email and absently refreshed the CNN.com home page on his computer. If he hadn’t found out that way, text messages from friends would have alerted him shortly thereafter.

At 1:46 p.m. ET, the moment Biden made his announcement on X, about 215,000 people had logged onto one of 124 major U.S. news sites. Fifteen minutes later, those sites had 893,000 readers, according to Chartbeat.

On apnews.com, 3,580 people accessed the site in a span of 1:46 p.m. Nearly an hour later, at 2:43 p.m., the Associated Press news website hit its afternoon peak, with 18,936 new visitors. CNN.com and its news app saw a fivefold increase in usage within 20 minutes of the news, the network said.

The networks switched to regular programming for the story between 1:50 and 2:04 p.m. During the relatively quiet quarter to 2 p.m., a combined 2.69 million people watched CNN, Fox News Channel or MSNBC, the Nielsen company said. The three networks’ audience rose to 6.84 million between 2 and 4 p.m. Eastern. Add ABC and CBS, which also had special coverage during those hours, and there will be at least 9.27 million people following the story on television.

How did everyone get there so quickly? Word of mouth played a big part, Wheatley suggested. In his favor, Peeler said he didn’t open his text messages until he pulled up.

Many people also have alerts set on their phone.

“Our phones are constantly beeping at us, and we have them on us all the time,” said Brian Ott, a professor of media and communications at Missouri State University and author of “The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage.”

Ott and his wife were traveling in Belgrade, Serbia, and because of the time difference, they went to bed Sunday night before Biden made his announcement. Ott found out the next morning when he checked online news sites and told his wife when she woke up.

“Oh, I already know,” she replied. She had logged into X when she got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Since moving to Italy, visiting Rome and Florence, Ott said every person he met who heard him speak English wanted to talk to him about Biden.

“I think the compulsion is the same for everyone,” he said. “In our digital world, information is capital, and everyone wants to demonstrate their capital.”

At his summer home in Pyharanta, Finland, Niiranen took a keen interest in U.S. politics, which the semiretired writer says came about during his time as an exchange student in Michigan. He went swimming on Sundays after 10 p.m. because the days there were longer.

Niiranen had heard of speculation that Biden might be withdrawing from the show, so as he sat down on the terrace after getting out of the water, he checked the CNN broadcast and found that to be the case.

“Interesting choices you have there!” he said. “I’ll watch it.”

While visiting family in Canaan, New Hampshire, Tracy Jasnowski had a week when she had no internet access because of an unreliable connection. Once a day, adults and children would retreat with their devices to a spot on the lawn where reception was more consistent. That was when she found out.

“I honestly thought I was going to throw up,” she said. “I was in shock. I was thrown in at the deep end. I had no idea this was going to happen.”

Even if she didn’t learn it then, Jasnowski said she quickly got text messages from friends. And when her father woke up from a nap, he turned on Fox News.

A generation or two ago, people would have had to watch TV or listen to the radio to hear a special report of important news, said Wheatley, the former NBC News executive. Then people would spread it by telling friends or family. Now, with social media, text alerts and websites available at the click of a button, news spreads “much, much faster.”

“The next logical question,” he said, “is how accurate is it?”

It’s a mantra drilled into young journalists: Get the news fast, but more importantly, get it right. Getting a big, breaking story wrong can ruin a career. This month’s big stories illustrate the pressures that come with the need for speed.

Almost immediately after Biden’s announcement, it became a big part of the story reporters were putting together that he hadn’t endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, to replace him. He did so within a half-hour, but that’s an eternity for those who want to ask questions or spread conspiracy theories.

Similarly, footage of a Trump rally where shots were fired immediately appeared on TV screens. But most of the initial reports were extremely cautious, sticking to what was already known: Trump was hurried off stage by Secret Service agents. There was blood. There was a noise like gunfire.

That, in turn, has led some to criticize journalists for being too cautious, too reluctant to call it an assassination attempt. But not all the facts are quickly known; nearly two weeks later, at a congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said it was still not entirely clear whether Trump was hit by a bullet or shrapnel. The next day, the FBI announced it had concluded it was a bullet.

In other words, there is often more to a story than meets the eye, and the rush of breaking news requires sticking closely to the facts available at the time, no matter what becomes clear later.

When Peeler reached his destination in Texas last week and checked what his friends had written about Biden, he called the websites of local television network affiliates. In Pennsylvania, Schweiger immediately turned to the AP and The New York Times online.

They were both grateful that they had a reliable source from which they could get the facts.

“I assume that news is available 24 hours a day and that there are always people who can be called upon at any time to help with any issue,” Schweiger said.

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David Bauder covers media for AP. Follow him on http://twitter.com/dbauder.