Here’s an interesting ‘chicken or egg’ type question: Is the national news media bias sowing division in our country or are they just responding to demand for news that coincides with our partisan beliefs?
One thing everyone can agree on is that our national news media do not do a very good job keeping us informed … and it’s getting worse, not better.
But Republicans and, to a lesser extent, Independents, perceive much more bias on television and radio and in newspapers than Democrats do.
These Pew Research charts (September 2018) display the stark differences between our views of bias in specific news media outlets.
So who to trust? Republicans say only one television station — Fox News — is unbiased, which explains why they rely upon that source for the vast majority of their news. Democrats rely most heavily on CNN and MSNBC. And Independents mostly rely on public broadcasting.
A recent panel of journalists gathered at the University of Pennsylvania discussed “echo chambers” and the press’ loss of credibility. The journalists asked, “Are we giving the fullest story possible, or are we reinforcing the bubble in which people live? Some Americans simply tune out facts that clash with their preconceived notions. People silo themselves off from news they don’t want to hear and exist in an echo chamber. It’s a big problem.”
But can you really blame news consumers, especially conservatives, when most journalists are politically biased and have effectively become a propaganda arm of the far-left resistance?
Consider this:
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In 2013, The Washington Post reported that only 7% of all journalists self identified as Republicans. (see chart below)
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In 2016, The Washington Free Beacon reported that not a single one of the 72 members of the White House press corps identified with the GOP.
If you’re a Republican, you won’t be surprised by the following charts from a Harvard report that chronicled the extremely negative “tone” of news coverage during the first year of the Trump administration … despite numerous successes on both the domestic front (4.2% GDP growth, record low unemployment, rising wages, tame inflation, tax cuts, deregulation) and in foreign affairs (defeated ISIS, peace on the Korean Peninsula, increased NATO participant funding, multiple hostages returned).
On top of all that negative reporting, national TV networks have grossly underreported positive news, such as the record stock market performance during Trump’s first year in office.
So if we believe the national news media is doing a terrible job providing unbiased information to us — information which we need to make important decisions — how do we fix the problem?
According to the CATO Institute, despite perceptions of journalistic bias, only 29% of the public want the government to prevent media outlets from publishing a story that government officials say is biased or inaccurate. Instead, a strong majority (70%) say government should not have the power to stop such news stories.
Americans are also responding by reducing their reliance on TV and print and expanding their online news sources.
