It's certainly possible that their news section is closer to the center, that's what you see at Fox News, where actual news reporting allows facts to poke through some times. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for their news reporting to be left-wing, though, when the paper as a whole skews so far Right.
How you weigh the opinion vs news sections to get "paper as a whole" is a mystery to me. They're just different. The news sections seem pretty close to the NYT, which I call 8/10 left-wing. (Where 5=neutral.) Not that the 1D left-right spectrum is very useful.
Right, I recall the reporting being seen as distinctly to the left of the editorial page even in the 90s, but the gap opened up more in the 00s. Especially as it moved away from the focus on markets/business news (I think that shift happened more in the 00s).
Another interpretation is that Republicans *don't trust anybody*, while Democrats mostly trust the status quo media.
Also:
* What does it mean to "trust Joe Rogan"? I trust that he says what he believes and isn't intentionally lying. I don't trust that he or his guests are correct.
I think you can easily generalize that high quality news is likely to be consumed by Dem leaning voters, the Economist certainly fits. Substack blogs obviously vary widely in their quality/seriousness so hard to get meaningful “trust” data
This makes sense. Most news consumption is, ultimately, for entertainment purposes. Maximally engaging infotainment both affirms the virtue of one’s own tribe *and* pillories the outgroup. The felt utility of consensus on the basic facts of news stories started to become secondary in the 90’s and now, with the rise of the Al Gore rhythms, is at an all time low. At least, until reality hits you personally in the face e.g., your kid gets the measles or you miss out on admission to Harvard because they already have enough asians, thank you very much.
It’s also interesting to see what the Republicans and Democrat coded forms of infotainment reveal about the personalities of the consumers. Fox News and the NY Post often focus on tabloid style outrage slop, often mixing standard news with gruesome true crime and sex scandals. Everything is sensational and designed to “own the libs.” While the NY Times and Atlantic are clearly set up to appeal to a more highbrow audience that enjoys intellectualism. Even just looking at the graphic design on those sites suggests that they are meant for more refined audience.
You need look no further than r/Conservative, the poster child of this. Every article is either:
- EXTREMELY sensationalised/clickbait headline that the commenters take as fact and seem not to read the actual story, in which the rag they inevitably linked has 0 actual evidence
The poll would give you the impression that conservative media consumption is still centralized into Fox News, but it is clearly only capturing part of the giant archipelago of streamers and podcasters that out-perform their liberal counterparts by millions of views.
It would be interesting to see the consumption rates further broken down not just by party. Consider the fact that black voters vote 90% Democrat, but many of those voters are lower in educational attainment than white Republicans. How many black Democrats are reading the Atlantic? I bet, once you sort by only white Democrats, there’s an even bigger gulf between Dem and GOP voters in media tastes.
A. If I wanted to defend MAGAs I would probably say: "Dems like to read WAPO's culture war clickbait and Reps like to read box scores from their grandkid's HS baseball games from their local paper." Some truth to this defense, though obv. Reps love culture war clickbait too. But also many (on both sides, but more Reps) read no political news at all. Also, even among the (small) fraction of Dems who do actually read prestige newspapers, though the top stories tend to be clickbait or allegedly heart-warming stories.
B. Why are they polling on Joe Rogan but not Jon Stewart/Jon Oliver/Talk show monologues/The View etc. ? Somehow Pew is not all that interested in exposing left wing dipshits to scrutiny.
C. For me, Trust/don't trust seems like a less relevant metric than useful/not useful. If you understand the biases, NYT is very useful. But if you are interested in keeping up with the PRC on a day to day basis and you understand the biases, then China Daily is also useful. (Just as accurate FWIW as NYT too)
I used to hope right-leaning voters would turn on their safe-space media universe eventually, but instead I think they were just ahead of the curve. Now I’m pretty confident left-leaning voters are going (mostly have already gone) down the same fact-free path. Emotional Truth > Actual Truth
So are conservatives not aware that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, that COVID could not possibly have come from a lab leak in Wuhan and that men can get pregnant?
You are a single data point. If I look hard enough, I could find a Republican who believes in open borders but it wouldn't tell me anything about Republicans as a group.
I can’t decide whether I love or hate the fact that Elon Musk and Catturd are in the same bucket here
I was surprised to see the Wall Street Journal numbers. Growing up, it was considered a conservative leaning publication.
That’s the point. The Wall Street Journal is coded as “liberal” on account of doing credible, serious reporting.
I dunno. The WSJ editorial page was and still is on the right mostly. News not so much. I don't think this is new.
It's certainly possible that their news section is closer to the center, that's what you see at Fox News, where actual news reporting allows facts to poke through some times. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for their news reporting to be left-wing, though, when the paper as a whole skews so far Right.
How you weigh the opinion vs news sections to get "paper as a whole" is a mystery to me. They're just different. The news sections seem pretty close to the NYT, which I call 8/10 left-wing. (Where 5=neutral.) Not that the 1D left-right spectrum is very useful.
Right, I recall the reporting being seen as distinctly to the left of the editorial page even in the 90s, but the gap opened up more in the 00s. Especially as it moved away from the focus on markets/business news (I think that shift happened more in the 00s).
Another interpretation is that Republicans *don't trust anybody*, while Democrats mostly trust the status quo media.
Also:
* What does it mean to "trust Joe Rogan"? I trust that he says what he believes and isn't intentionally lying. I don't trust that he or his guests are correct.
* What about people who read Substack blogs?
* And why isn't the The Economist in the list?
All valid. I think Hanania has identified a real problem here, but the numbers on trust are clearly commingled with effects like you describe.
I think you can easily generalize that high quality news is likely to be consumed by Dem leaning voters, the Economist certainly fits. Substack blogs obviously vary widely in their quality/seriousness so hard to get meaningful “trust” data
The Economist has its own weird and inconsistent biases. They change over time, too.
What's "high quality" is in the eye of the beholder.
Quality in this instance is not about bias but more about in how rigorous the reporting is and the advanced the writing is
This makes sense. Most news consumption is, ultimately, for entertainment purposes. Maximally engaging infotainment both affirms the virtue of one’s own tribe *and* pillories the outgroup. The felt utility of consensus on the basic facts of news stories started to become secondary in the 90’s and now, with the rise of the Al Gore rhythms, is at an all time low. At least, until reality hits you personally in the face e.g., your kid gets the measles or you miss out on admission to Harvard because they already have enough asians, thank you very much.
It’s also interesting to see what the Republicans and Democrat coded forms of infotainment reveal about the personalities of the consumers. Fox News and the NY Post often focus on tabloid style outrage slop, often mixing standard news with gruesome true crime and sex scandals. Everything is sensational and designed to “own the libs.” While the NY Times and Atlantic are clearly set up to appeal to a more highbrow audience that enjoys intellectualism. Even just looking at the graphic design on those sites suggests that they are meant for more refined audience.
You need look no further than r/Conservative, the poster child of this. Every article is either:
- EXTREMELY sensationalised/clickbait headline that the commenters take as fact and seem not to read the actual story, in which the rag they inevitably linked has 0 actual evidence
- A Babylon Bee article
The poll would give you the impression that conservative media consumption is still centralized into Fox News, but it is clearly only capturing part of the giant archipelago of streamers and podcasters that out-perform their liberal counterparts by millions of views.
It would be interesting to see the consumption rates further broken down not just by party. Consider the fact that black voters vote 90% Democrat, but many of those voters are lower in educational attainment than white Republicans. How many black Democrats are reading the Atlantic? I bet, once you sort by only white Democrats, there’s an even bigger gulf between Dem and GOP voters in media tastes.
:many of these people probably don’t know much about the New York Post, but have a heuristic that “if something is a newspaper, don’t trust it.”:
Nearly as many conservatives distrust Fox as distrust the New York Post.
At least some of the demographic here has to have the heuristic "If it exists, don't trust it."
A. If I wanted to defend MAGAs I would probably say: "Dems like to read WAPO's culture war clickbait and Reps like to read box scores from their grandkid's HS baseball games from their local paper." Some truth to this defense, though obv. Reps love culture war clickbait too. But also many (on both sides, but more Reps) read no political news at all. Also, even among the (small) fraction of Dems who do actually read prestige newspapers, though the top stories tend to be clickbait or allegedly heart-warming stories.
B. Why are they polling on Joe Rogan but not Jon Stewart/Jon Oliver/Talk show monologues/The View etc. ? Somehow Pew is not all that interested in exposing left wing dipshits to scrutiny.
C. For me, Trust/don't trust seems like a less relevant metric than useful/not useful. If you understand the biases, NYT is very useful. But if you are interested in keeping up with the PRC on a day to day basis and you understand the biases, then China Daily is also useful. (Just as accurate FWIW as NYT too)
This is all not very surprising; as you note the trend is extremely durable.
I don’t really get why you didn’t think it was a problem the right has been huffing misinformation *before* the election
Based on your tweet, I was expecting worse.
I used to hope right-leaning voters would turn on their safe-space media universe eventually, but instead I think they were just ahead of the curve. Now I’m pretty confident left-leaning voters are going (mostly have already gone) down the same fact-free path. Emotional Truth > Actual Truth
I don't think this is true of the older generations, but all bets are off with Gen Z and later.
So are conservatives not aware that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, that COVID could not possibly have come from a lab leak in Wuhan and that men can get pregnant?
Hey I’m a conservative and I read all the time, AND I support Israel. I never watch CNN or Fox.
You are a single data point. If I look hard enough, I could find a Republican who believes in open borders but it wouldn't tell me anything about Republicans as a group.
“data”
Actually horrifying. Thanks.
You are incredibly fixated on Catturd. Why do you give that rando the time of day?