The United States' two dominant political parties, Republicans and Democrats, have become increasingly polarized since the 1970s, and its citizens have similarly moved apart politically. It is not uncommon to see researchers, politicians, and regular citizens blame news media for contributing to that growing polarization and partisanship. Today, accusations that journalistic outlets are biased and references to the “liberal media” are ubiquitous, with 87% of Republicans and 53% of Democrats believing ‘the media’ favor one political party.
In early 2020, the Pew Research Center conducted a study of partisan division in American news audiences and found that the news consumption habits of Republicans and Democrats vary enormously according to their political beliefs. Republicans are significantly less trusting (and more distrusting) of the news, and they are less likely to consume news in general.
Pew also asked respondents to share their perspectives about 30 different news sources, and Republicans distrusted 20 of them—or two-thirds. Of the 10 remaining news sources, Republicans were more trusting of outlets that media analysts find to be politically slanted to the right, such as Fox News and select talk radio programs. Democrats, on the other hand, trusted 22 of the 30 sources Pew studied and distrusted eight. However, the eight sources Democrats distrusted overlapped with the 10 sources Republicans trusted.
Republicans also consume political news less frequently than Democrats, which doubtless relates to their greater distrust for news sources. According to Pew, Fox News was the only news source of the 30 studied that at least one-third of Republicans had consumed political news from in the week preceding the study. This is a smaller array of sources than Democrats, at least one-third of whom had consumed political news from CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, or MSNBC in the same week. CNN was the most frequently consumed and most trusted source of political news for Democratic news consumers, while Fox News was the most trusted and most frequently consumed outlet for Republicans.
What is perhaps even more alarming is that none of the 30 sources Pew Research studied in early 2020 was trusted by more than half of Americans. And sadly, this partisan gap in media use and perception patterns in U.S. news consumers is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. In fact, the gap has only deepened between 2014 and 2020. Research from Pew conducted over that time suggests that Democrats' trust in established media outlets has stood firm or increased, while Republicans have become more detached from—and distrusting of—these news outlets. For example, Republicans trust at least 15 of the news outlets studied less in 2020 than they did in 2014. And their distrust of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and CNN—outlets trusted by Democrats and generally well-regarded by media analysts—grew the most during that time.
These clear partisan divides in American news media consumption and trust are reflected—and influenced—by a variety of factors at national and local levels. It is important to note that politicians and powerful political actors have labeled American journalists ‘liberal elites’ for decades, and talk radio has decried liberal bias in the ‘mainstream media’ since the 1980s.
However, more recently, those attacks have become more common, targeted, and intense, and have originated with actors at the highest levels of government. Most notable among these is U.S. President Donald Trump, who has frequently verbally attacked the Fourth Estate since he was elected. Three months after taking office, Trump called the news media “the enemy of the American People” and “FAKE NEWS” in a tweet that derided the New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN by name. During his time in the Oval Office, Trump and his administration have also prevented some long-time White House correspondents from attending White House press briefings, and instead granted press passes to self-described journalists working at highly partisan media. Members of the Trump administration have also called journalists “sick people,” who don’t like the United States and want “to take away our history and our heritage.”
This partisan attack of the press encourages Americans to question, doubt, and in the most extreme cases, attack news and information that doesn’t align with a particular political viewpoint. And sentiments like these, espoused by powerful political actors, might well be contagious. Research shows that people exposed to elite discourse about the problem of “fake news” both display less trust in the media and are less likely to correctly identify what news is real.
Perceptions of political bias in journalism are also tied to perceptions of bias overall. According to a 2018 Knight Foundation study, Americans consider 62% of news they consume on TV, in newspapers, and on the radio to be biased, and 44% of it to be inaccurate. The same study revealed that Americans also do not distinguish between bias and inaccuracy, generally finding news organizations they believe to be biased to also be inaccurate, and vice versa. This lack of trust has negative implications for media literacy: For example, people with more trust in news media are more likely to be able to distinguish real news from opinion.
Over time, many news consumers have also become conditioned to seek out news from the outlets that align most with their own political views while avoiding those that controvert their beliefs, a behavior called partisan selective exposure. Partisan selective exposure creates a pattern in which people consume media content that reinforces their opinions and opt out of divergent perspectives that could potentially influence their political behavior. Put another way, they increasingly seek out, or find themselves in, echo chambers. Over time, this exposure to partisan news influences news consumers' voting decisions and their political participation. For example, when news consumers read only news that agrees with their political beliefs, they are more likely to simultaneously become radicalized and want to participate further in politics.
Notably, people who consume political news online believe that the news that reflects their own partisan beliefs is more credible than news that disagrees with their beliefs. Through the psychological process of motivated reasoning, highly partisan news consumers are also likely to treat counter-factual information—that is, news that goes against their preconceptions—as false information and, after rejecting that news, may actually become more entrenched in their original preconceptions.
Of direct relevance to this public perception that American journalistic outlets are politically biased—specifically, in favor of liberals—is yet another demographic reality separating U.S. journalists from average Americans: journalists' geographical tie to the East and West coasts. American journalistic outlets, and the journalists who work for them, are more likely to live in the East and West Coasts. According to a 2019 Pew Research study, approximately 22 percent of newsroom employees in the U.S. live in Los Angeles or New York City. New York alone is home to 12 percent of all U.S. newsroom staffers.
At the same time, journalists are less likely to live in the South than the average American, though they’re equally as likely to live in the West and the Midwest of the country. This coastal concentration is even stronger when we focus on online outlets and remove those with print publications. Forty percent of American online journalists in the U.S. live in the Northeast. Many of the most popular or established digital news sites are headquartered in major cities in this region of the country.
American journalism’s strong ties to the coasts makes sense when you consider cluster theory, which points out the advantages industries gain and make use of when they establish themselves in specific regions. When businesses are clustered together in a specific geographic area, so are their actors, resources, and skills, which combined can promote innovation and give these clusters competitive advantages that make them more productive.
This tie to the coasts influences American journalists and the work they publish. First, it undoubtedly contributes to the fact that journalists are indeed more politically liberal than the average American. While U.S. journalistic culture promotes the use of procedural tactics to mitigate the impact of that characteristic—such as by interviewing stakeholders on opposing sides and promoting balance—journalists themselves do tend to self-identify with traditionally liberal values.
However, the realities of life in major cities and industrial hubs is undoubtedly different than the realities of life in smaller and more rural areas. Because of their concentration in the East and West Coasts of the country, journalists may be more likely to reflect a particular cultural experience.
Additionally, those areas are more expensive to live in than most of the rest of the country, and many would-be journalists thus cannot afford to live there—especially when they are starting off their careers and may be applying for unpaid internships. (Additionally, they may not want to live in such places.) This artificially limits the potential talent pool for journalists, and tends to systematically disadvantage journalists who do not come from wealthy backgrounds.
Finally, this concentration of journalists and outlets on the edges of the country can be a disservice to local journalism. Not only can it result in important local and regional issues being under-covered (or poorly covered), but the perception that journalists in the United States do not reflect their communities can have downstream impacts on trust in local journalism, too. This makes it harder yet for local outlets to attain resources and audiences in today’s media attention economy.
Republicans are less likely to trust (and more likely to actively distrust) U.S. journalistic outlets. In contrast, Democrats are more likely to trust those outlets. This gap has deepened over the past decade.
Partisan selective exposure creates a pattern in which people consume media content that reinforces their opinions and opt out of divergent perspectives that could potentially influence their political behavior. Today, the media diets of Americans differ considerably and are often associated with their political alignment.
American journalistic outlets, and the journalists who work for them, are more likely to live on the East and West Coasts than average Americans, and less likely to live in the South. This has raised concerns about the representativeness of U.S. journalism.