Media


A recurring topic in political discussions is the idea of news media. The chart below touches on this. The left chart is the responses from Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. The left column is representative of responses questions regarding "the [general] news media" and the right is representative of questions regarding "the news media you use most often".

There are a variety of trends that can be identified in the chart. The statistics integrated into the chart strongly suggest that Democrats have more faith in the news media of all three most common political parties in the United States. In all responses to the presented statements, Democrats had the highest percentages of responses. For the first question, 33% of Democrats interviewed believed that "the [general] news media" does care about the people they report on, compared to the 16% of Independents and 13% of Republicans. Although this was the highest, only a 1/3 of the Democrats believed this. Independents seemed to be less reliant on the general news media, ranking just 3% higher than Republicans. When this same question was posted for "the news media [they] use most often], nearly half of Democrats that were polled stated the news media they rely on does care about those they report on.
According to the chart below Democrats, who typically aligned with progressive, liberal ideologies, tend to rely on news media sources such as CNN, MSNBC, Buzzfeed News, The Guardian. This presents more faith in these news sources, suggesting they have a trend of caring for those they discuss in their reporting and news.


The chart states that 43% of Republicans seemed to be assured in their news media sources' care for those they report on. Republicans are on the right-wing, conservative end of the political spectrum, meaning they trust sources such as Wall Street Journal (which is more centrist but does fall on the right side of the ideological spectrum). They do have faith in Fox News, Drudge Report, and The Blaze. On the other hand, 36% of Independents believed their news sources did have care for those they report on.

47% of Democrats believed that the general news media is responsible for admitting their faults and mistakes. Less than half of Independents believed believe this, ranking in at 20%, showing the gradual decline of media trust as you go further right on the political spectrum towards conservatism, where a mere 8% of Republicans believed the news media. This reflects reality, where Republicans often seen the news media to be deceitful, and incapable of recognizing when they have a bias, false reporting, or just overall inaccurate production of information. When this same question was posed for each party's news source they generally subscribe to, numbers increased for each party. More than half of Democratic that were surveyed for this study proclaimed their faith that the news sources they subscribe to are successful at admitting faults. Democrats perceive their news source such as CNN, as the more reliable news sources in the world, being based purely off fact are not sensationalist. When information is shown to be wrong or they make a general mistake in practice, they hold themselves accountable. Independent members and Republicans were at a mutual 43% of votes. These two political parties tend to have doubt in media sources overall at higher rates, seeing media as to not be trusted. These results reflect the correlation of news source faith based on political parties.

The third prompted question further demonstrated the political parties' perspectives regarding media sources. Like the previous questions, Democrats had the highest conviction for the morality of the news media. Democrats tend to believe the news media is generally reliable. In this case, 41% of the Democrats surveyed expressed confidence in the morality of the general news world. Independents ranked in second, similar to their ranking in the previous results, but were at a much lower rate from Democrats, at 15%. Republican results were practically the same, falling only one percent lower at 14%. Nearly sixty percent of Democrats believe in the morality of the news sources they subscribe to. In reality, Democrats tend to assign their new sources (CNN, MSNBC, NBC) as the most non-corrupt sources, relying on pure fact and steer away from sensationalist approaches to reporting, and often condemn the information recycled by media sources who most have Republican, conservative consumers. Republicans feel the same way vice versa to Democrats, having strong faith in the news they consume, and condemn Democratic-leaning, liberal news and often cite the presence of an "agenda" being exercised by their reports. Independents were the lowest at 44%, and this prompt is actually the closest in range that all the parties have been on a particular media question.

The final prompt concerned the protection of Democracy.


After analyzing the charts, in all cases, Democrats had the most positive reviews of news media. For each prompt, they had the highest percentage. Independents seemed to be somewhat skeptical, due to their frequency on being in the middle-ground between Democrats and Republicans, but were closer in numbers to Republicans, suggesting a somewhat similar alignment in perspective regarding news media reporting. Despite this, Republicans appeared to have the most doubt and negative response to news media.

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