Too many want ‘facts’ tinged red or blue
Many in U.S. watch only the news with which they agree
If the late Democratic senator and Washington wise man Daniel Patrick Moynihan were alive today, he’d probably be issuing a correction.
Moynihan was known for his maxim, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” But a new study from the Pew Research Center shows that a significant chunk of the American populace lives in a media bubble in which they encounter only facts, or “facts,” with which they agree.
“When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds,” the report states. “There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust.” And that’s not good news for democracy.
We are a nation with a growing number of people who aren’t open to debate. They know the answers, and they want them reinforced. They gravitate to venues where never is heard a discouraging word about their take.
The study found that about 20% of Americans identify themselves as hard-core liberals or conservatives. That’s a minority, But that’s twice as many people who identified themselves that way a decade ago, says Amy Mitchell, the Pew Research Center’s director of journalism research. So we’ve got a fifth of our citizens living in a news bubble.
What’s more, Pew says, this group has leverage that goes well beyond the actual number. Pew says that 20% have “a greater impact on the political process than do those with more mixed ideological views. They are the most likely to vote, donate to campaigns and participate directly in politics.” And, says Mitchell, they tend to be “influencers,” who can shape the views of others.
Years back, the goal of much of the American media was to play it straight down the middle. Newspapers and network news tried to avoid appearing partisan. And so everyone was consuming the same news. As the American public has become more polarized, so have their media.
The huge success of Fox News showed that there was a serious market out there hungry for news with a rightward tilt. Ultimately MSNBC carved out an identity as its equivalent for the left.
In the digital era, with a seemingly infinite number of news and opinion sources, building that bubble is hardly a challenge.
A previous Pew survey docu- mented the increasing division of the American people. “Now we see it playing out in people’s media habits,” Mitchell says.
The survey, found that conservatives are “tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.”
On Facebook, conservatives are more likely than those in other political categories to encounter opinions reflecting their own. And they are more likely to have real-world friends who share their views.
Liberals have no Fox equivalent. Fifteen percent listed CNN as their go-to news source, followed by NPR (13%), MSNBC (12%) and The New York Times (10%).
One cool tidbit: People with consistently liberal views have no sense of humor when it comes to dissent. They are “more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or ‘defriend’ someone on a social network — as well as to end a personal friendship — because of politics,” the report said.
Says Mitchell, “We see a political information environment more oriented around furthering divide rather than enabling cohesion.”
And so the forecast calls for gridlock for the foreseeable future.