Polarized Media Landscape Mirrors Polarized Public

Pick up almost any newspaper or scroll through the news online and chances are that you will come across articles describing seemingly unbridgeable divisions across party, race, gender and class lines. Turn on cable news and the shouting suggests much the same.

Reflecting what is portrayed in the media, many agree that divisiveness in public life is a major issue, according to the recent Hidden Common Ground survey from Public Agenda/USAToday/Ipsos.

Yet Americans also tend to be highly skeptical of the same entity pushing these narratives: the media. Only 27% of Americans agreed that the press is unbiased and just 45% said that they have “any confidence at all” in it, according to a 2019 Columbia Journalism Review/Reuters/Ipsos survey.

Distrust of the media is also evident in the Hidden Common Ground survey, which looks at perceptions of polarization in society. Americans believe that journalism and news media stand to gain the most from divisiveness in public life.

This cynicism is nothing particularly new. Faith in the press and other public institutions has been on the decline since the 1970s. And now that news can be delivered instantaneously on a multitude of online platforms with the advent of digital journalism and social media, the definition of the term “the press” has become much more nebulous than it was in the 1970s. A member of the press could be a blogger, vlogger, or a more traditional reporter, making the media landscape more challenging to navigate for news consumers and outlets alike.

Though Americans now have many more options to source their news, 40% say that they get their news from the television, followed by the internet (28%) and social media (12%). Hidden Common Ground provides additional evidence that the fragmentation of the media has contributed to divisiveness in society.

As America splits off into political tribes, we see that there is a link between certain channels and viewers’ inability to connect with or understand members of the opposite political party. Hidden Common Ground shows that Republicans who watch Fox News often (whose viewers tend to lean conservative) and Democrats who watch MSNBC often (whose viewers tend to be more liberal) are more likely to believe that the majority (at least 50%) of the opposite party to be so extreme that they cannot imagine finding common ground with them.

Determining what is driving Fox News and MSNBC viewers’ more extreme views is not unlike attempting to answer the chicken and egg question. Which came first – negative attitudes towards members of the opposite party and the desire to seek out negative stories, or distrust as a result of imbibing a steady stream of negative stories about them?

Fox News and MSNBC’s reputations precede them, and so they are likely drawing in viewers who are predisposed to agree with the views being propagated on those channels, as viewers have the agency to choose the channel that best reflects their particular worldview. Many are likely watching these channels because they want to see their beliefs reaffirmed and amplified, but it is also conceivable that these networks are persuading some viewers to hold more extreme opinions than they otherwise would have. 

CNN appears to have a slightly ameliorating effect on Republicans (it could also be that Republicans who watch CNN tend to be more tolerant of Democrats). Those who do not watch CNN are more likely to view the majority of Democrats as extreme (62%), while 33% of those who watch it often say the same.

Though they might see members of the opposite party as extreme, 73% of Americans say that there is more common ground among the public than is commonly portrayed, raising the question of whether cable news outlets are pushing people apart by making them see their fellow Americans in a more negative light.

Notably, Republicans say they have a more charitable view of other Americans than Democrats, with 82% agreeing that there is more common ground among the public than is typically portrayed, compared to just 68% of Democrats.

Polarization of the press is also evident in the Columbia Journalism Review/Reuters/Ipsos report, which found that Democrats and Republicans place wildly diverging levels of trust in the same mainstream media outlets, as shown below.

As an industry, journalism is under significant strain, with newsrooms shrinking, mass layoffs at some of the larger publications and constant disruption of revenue streams. The decline of print media due to the collapse of traditional advertising models hit the industry hard. Over the past 15 years, some 2,000 newspapers disappeared, creating “news deserts” in some communities where there is now only one local paper, or none at all (The Expanding News Desert).

As the news industry contracts to fewer outlets, and many of those outlets double-down on a strategy that prioritizes emotional engagement with its audience, we should expect continued fragmentation of society. What this means for the future of the free press and the integrity of democratic institutions remains to be seen.