Pew (“The Political Gap in Americans’ News Sources“):
For years now, Democrats have been much more likely than Republicans to say they trust the information that comes from national news organizations.
A new Pew Research Center survey gets much more specific: How do Americans feel about 30 of the country’s major news sources?
Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party are much more likely than Republicans and GOP-leaning independents to both use and trust a number of major news sources. These include the major TV networks (ABC, CBS and NBC), the cable news networks CNN and MSNBC, major public broadcasters PBS and NPR, and the legacy newspaper with the largest number of digital subscribers, The New York Times.
Republicans, meanwhile, are much more likely to distrust than trust all of these sources. A smaller number of the sources we asked about are more heavily used and trusted by Republicans than Democrats, including Fox News, The Joe Rogan Experience, Newsmax, The Daily Wire, the Tucker Carlson Network and Breitbart.
In many cases, supporters of the two main U.S. political parties are relying largely on different sources of news and information.
Republicans and independents who lean Republican get news from a fairly concentrated group of sources, and one rises to the top: Fox News. A majority of Republicans (57%) say they regularly get news from the cable network, at least double the share who say they turn to any other news source we asked about.
Behind Fox, Republicans are most likely to say they regularly get news from the three major broadcast networks – ABC News (27%), NBC News (24%) and CBS News (22%) – and The Joe Rogan Experience podcast (22%).
While not among Republicans’ most-consumed news sources, several sources are more likely to be regular sources of news for Republicans than Democrats, including Newsmax (15% vs. 1%), The Daily Wire (12% vs. 2%) and Tucker Carlson Network (9% vs. 1%).
Democrats and Democratic leaners, on the other hand, turn to a wider range of the sources we asked about. Nearly half of Democrats say they regularly get news from CNN (48%), NBC (47%) and ABC (46%). About four-in-ten Democrats say they get news from CBS (39%), while roughly three-in-ten say the same about MSNBC (33%), NPR (32%), The Associated Press (31%), PBS (31%), BBC News (30%) and The New York Times (29%).
All of these sources are far more likely to be consumed by Democrats than Republicans. To a lesser extent, Democrats also are more likely than Republicans to say they get news from The Washington Post (18% vs. 7%), Politico (12% vs. 4%) and The Atlantic (10% vs. 1%).
The general findings are hardly surprising. We’ve known for a very long time that people select news sources that confirm their biases rather than challenging them. As the parties have further sorted along educational lines, with college-educated voters moving to the Democratic Party and the working class moving to the GOP, it’s only natural that their news diets would reflect this.
Regardless of one’s views of the usefulness and trustworthiness of the various sources on the list, the degree of sorting should be worrisome. A democracy can’t function without a common understanding of how the government is performing.
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Author: James Joyner
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