Horowitz: We Increasingly Live in Two Separate Media Universes

Tuesday, February 04, 2020

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

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The media sources Democrats and Republicans trust and rely on for information about politics and government are growing even more divergent, according to a recently released national survey conducted by Pew Research Center.  As anyone who channel surfs between Sean Hannity on Fox, a go-to source for conservative Republicans, and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, a favorite of liberal Democrats, knows, these two highly rated opinion hosts not only disagree vehemently on whether or not Trump should be removed from office; they fundamentally disagree on the basic facts.

More broadly, “evidence suggests that partisan polarization in the use and trust of media sources has widened over the past five years,” Pew reports. “Republicans have grown increasingly alienated from most of the more established sources, while Democrats’ confidence in them remains stable, and in some cases, has strengthened.”  Republican distrust increased in 15 of the 20 media sources tested over time, including CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

For example, only about one-in-three conservative Republicans now trust CNN, while 7-in-10 liberal Democrats do, On the other hand, 3-in-4 conservative Republicans trust Fox News, while only a little more than 1-in-10 liberal Democrats do.

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Not surprisingly, since Democrats trust a broader number of outlets, they rely on a greater variety of sources for information.   Republicans are increasingly reliant on Fox News as their prime source of information. “Overall, only one source, Fox News, was used by at least one-third of Republicans for political and election news in the past week.” according to Pew.  “There are five different sources from which at least one-third of Democrats received political or election news in the last week (CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News and MSNBC).” 

Fox News’out-sized role in the Republican media universe is further demonstrated by the fact that 6-in-10 Republicans say they “got political or election news” from the conservative news channel in the past week.

The fact that ideology and party identification now largely determine the media sources we trust and go to is a major contributing factor to our polarized politics.  Without at least a shared upon agreement about the facts of a particular situation, it is hard to have a meaningful national conversation.  Also, research shows that when one’s views are only reinforced and amplified as opposed to being challenged by different perspectives, we become more certain that we are right and less open to principled compromise.

This new survey from Pew, unfortunately, shows that as we move into a critical election year, this problem is not getting better; it's getting worse.

 

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Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

 

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