American Journalists

The American Journalist Under Attack

 This survey continues the series of major national studies of U.S. journalists begun in 1971 by sociologist John Johnstone and continued in 1982, 1992, 2002, and 2013 by David Weaver, Cleve Wilhoit and their colleagues at Indiana University. Few studies of a profession as important as journalism can claim a half-century’s analytical perspective on the work, professional attitudes, and ethics from large samples of the people working in it. That’s what this study does with its contribution of important decennial measures of the pulse of American journalism. This present study, based on an online survey with 1,600 U.S. journalists conducted in early 2022, updates these findings and adds new ones concerning democracy and threats to journalism. Overall, the findings suggest that the past decade has had significant effects on U.S. journalists, some more negative than positive. Compared to 2013, the latest demographic profile reveals that U.S. journalists are now slightly more educated on average and more likely to identify as Democrats or Independents. While the gender pay gap has narrowed, there are still significantly more men than women in the profession, and fewer racial or ethnic minorities than in the general population. U.S. journalists today are slightly more satisfied with their work and more likely to say they have complete autonomy to select stories. However, about six in 10 journalists say that journalism is headed in the wrong direction, and more than four in 10 say that that their news staffs have shrunk in 2021 rather than remained the same or grown. Other findings also indicate that U.S. journalists are less likely to consider reaching the widest possible audiences and getting information to the public quickly as very important roles, and more likely to emphasize the importance of investigating government claims. U.S. journalists continue to rely heavily on social media in their daily work, despite more than half of the journalists also thinking social media have negative impacts on their profession. Most use social media to check for breaking news and to monitor what other news organizations are doing, and few use these interactive media for interviewing sources. One of the starkest findings is the gender differences in abuse now experienced by a majority of journalists. Female journalists were 7-to-14 times more likely to have experienced sexism and about 10 times more likely to have encountered threats of sexual violence, both online and offline. Additional findings are available online at www.theAmericanJournalist.org Lars Willnat, Ph.D. John Ben Snow Research Professor, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University David H. Weaver, Ph.D. Distinguished and Roy W. Howard Professor Emeritus, Media School, Indiana University Cleve Wilhoit, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Media School, Indiana University

 

Journalism and Illiberalism

A number of posts have discussed media bias.

James Bennet at The Economist:

In my experience, reporters overwhelmingly support Democratic policies and candidates. They are generally also motivated by a desire for a more just world. Neither of those tendencies are new. But there has been a sea change over the past ten years in how journalists think about pursuing justice. The reporters’ creed used to have its foundation in liberalism, in the classic philosophical sense. The exercise of a reporter’s curiosity and empathy, given scope by the constitutional protections of free speech, would equip readers with the best information to form their own judgments. The best ideas and arguments would win out. The journalist’s role was to be a sworn witness; the readers’ role was to be judge and jury. In its idealised form, journalism was lonely, prickly, unpopular work, because it was only through unrelenting scepticism and questioning that society could advance. If everyone the reporter knew thought X, the reporter’s role was to ask: why X?

Illiberal journalists have a different philosophy, and they have their reasons for it. They are more concerned with group rights than individual rights, which they regard as a bulwark for the privileges of white men. They have seen the principle of free speech used to protect right-wing outfits like Project Veritas and Breitbart News and are uneasy with it. They had their suspicions of their fellow citizens’ judgment confirmed by Trump’s election, and do not believe readers can be trusted with potentially dangerous ideas or facts. They are not out to achieve social justice as the knock-on effect of pursuing truth; they want to pursue it head-on. The term “objectivity” to them is code for ignoring the poor and weak and cosying up to power, as journalists often have done.

And they do not just want to be part of the cool crowd. They need to be. To be more valued by their peers and their contacts – and hold sway over their bosses – they need a lot of followers in social media. That means they must be seen to applaud the right sentiments of the right people in social media. The journalist from central casting used to be a loner, contrarian or a misfit. Now journalism is becoming another job for joiners, or, to borrow Twitter’s own parlance, “followers”, a term that mocks the essence of a journalist’s role

Politics and the American Political Science Association

Robert Maranto at The Hill:

From what I can tell, not a single open Republican now serves on the 31-member APSA governing council. That leaves half the country unrepresented politically in an organization whose job is to promote political research about all the country, and the world.

 Reflecting behind-the-scenes pressure from activists, since the 2012 conference in New Orleans, no APSA annual meeting has occurred in a red state, with only one in a purple state (Philadelphia in 2016). Last year, APSA met in Montreal, but it seems unlikely that we might meet in Dallas, Phoenix, Charlotte or Orlando.

...

When I mention this lack of representation, older APSA members admit it is a problem. For younger members, raised under the spell of critical theory, responses are mixed. In the meantime, many conservatives (including some anti-Trumpers like myself) have just given up, keeping their heads low in a sort of academic Benedict Option.

Conservative Publication Breaks Bad

 Marvin Olasky used to edit World, which observed a "wall of separation" between opinion and reporting.

World’s history paralleled National Review’s, to a point—but unlike Buckley, the Belz brothers did not own World: A nonprofit with a board of directors has the final say. The board in the 1990s embraced the business/editorial wall of separation. But those were the Clinton years: Our editorial position that Clinton wasn’t fit to be president caused no waves. Not so in 2016 when we said the same thing about Donald Trump. That cover story had the potential to hurt the GOP. It angered our politically conservative board.

The board in 2021 did not pass a formal resolution removing the wall of separation, but it did take actions that had that effect. It approved a new product, World Opinions, and devoted a million dollars to making it work. The editorial team had no part in designing World Ops or in choosing contributors. It had no authority to reject columns, to vet them for conflicts of interest, or to strip them of hyperbole. 

It became clear that many World Ops columnists would not proceed with the skepticism that underlay traditional journalism. Many wouldn’t do on-the-ground reporting. Some brought with them all kinds of entangling alliances. World Ops promised to speak authoritatively on questions where the Bible allows differences of opinion. Publicity surrounding World Ops stressed the values of the new World order: “Unquestionably conservative . . . trustworthy . . . authoritative . . . unapologetic.” 

Last year I asked World executives and board leaders many questions about how World Ops came into being and what makes it Christian: Does “Biblical” equal “conservative”? What does “conservative” mean in an autocratic era? But the board did answer one question unambiguously: Who’s in charge of editorial? Board leaders told me the CEO is now “the quarterback” or “the general.” 

Self-Censorship on Campus

 Samuel Abrams at AEI:

Fire’s 2022-23 College Free Speech Rankings samples the views of almost 45,000 currently enrolled students at more than 200 American colleges and universities, the largest study of its kind to date. Like earlier iterations, it shows that conservatives are far more likely to self-censor than their liberal counterparts. For instance, when presented with the question of how often students have felt that they could not express their opinions on a subject because of how students, a professor or the administration would respond, 44 per cent of Democrats report self-censoring. This figure is notably lower than the 58 per cent of independents and 73 per cent of Republicans who do so.

However, the 2022/23 survey includes a number of new questions that offer a powerful new twist on the issue. For instance, while 53 per cent of independents and 66 per cent of Republicans feel some or more significant pressure to avoid certain topics, 43 per cent of Democratic students do so, too.

The most revealing finding emerges in response to a question about how worried students are about damaging their reputations because of a misunderstanding about something they have said or done. A significant majority of students – 63 per cent – are worried to some degree. And despite a generally liberal campus environment, fostered by progressive and woke administrators and liberal faculty who often engage in activist scholarship, there is almost no difference between how worried Democratic and Republican students are.

The 62 per cent of strong and weak Democratic Party-supporting students who report being worried about reputational damage is barely lower than the 64 per cent of those who are independents and leaners towards one party or another. For strong and weak Republicans, who already regularly self-censor at much higher rates than their Democratic counterparts, 63 per cent are worried about the social and personal consequences of their expression.

This is a remarkably unhealthy state of affairs in an educational environment that is supposed to be open, authentic and liberating. It should be no wonder that American students are anxious and that depression and other mental health issues are so prominent on campuses today.

Blue Bubbles

Many posts have discussed partisan polarization and aversive or negative partisanship.

Samuel Abrams at AEI:

Far too often, the headlines are missing the fact that so much closed-mindedness and balkanization in terms of openness toward engaging with political difference is far more pronounced on the left. And this is a phenomenon that I have observed as a professor who has taught college and university students for almost two decades now. Despite preaching ideas about inclusion, diversity, acceptance, and love, students on the left appear to be repeatedly closed-minded and intolerant of those who see the world differently; one is welcome if they fit within a narrow band of ideas and identities and everyone else is an oppressor of some sort.

The data is unambiguously clear here in terms of left-of-center student intolerance: In 2021, Axios found that young leftists, particularly females, were far more narrow minded than conservatives with just 5 percent of Republican college students saying that they would not befriend someone from the opposite party compared to almost 4 in 10 (37 percent) Democrats. The data also demonstrated that 30 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of Republicans would not work for someone who voted differently from them, while 71 percent of Democrats but only 31 percent of Republicans would not date someone with opposing views.

Turning to the nation at large, the numbers from the May 2021 American Perspectives Survey reveal similar levels of liberal bias toward those they disagree with. The survey found that despite our polarized politics, only 15 percent of Americans report ending relationships over political disagreements; the overwhelming majority—84 percent—have not walked away and figured out how to work with others with whom they may disagree. A further breakdown of the responses, however, uncovers some troubling findings. While 10 percent of conservatives say they have lost a friend over politics, 28 percent of liberals say the same. For extreme conservative identifiers, 22 percent say they have canceled a friendship, a handful of points higher than the national average. In contrast, a whopping 45 percent of extreme liberal identifiers have ended a friendship over politics—twice the figure of their conservative counterparts. Time and time again, the data tell the same story: Liberal college and university students, along with those who are left of center in the population at large, are far more closed minded and open to canceling others than their moderate and conservative counterparts. This should not be ignored.

DEI Statements

Many posts have discussed deliberation, argument, and the value of viewpoint diversity.

From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

FIRE is concerned by the proliferation of college and university policies requiring faculty applicants or current faculty to demonstrate their commitment to “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” often through a written statement that factors into hiring, reappointment, evaluation, promotion, or tenure decisions. In our newly released Q&A and full Statement on the Use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Criteria in Faculty Hiring and Evaluation, we explain how DEI statement policies can too easily function as ideological litmus tests that threaten employment or advancement opportunities for faculty who dissent from prevailing thought on DEI.

Over the past few years, FIRE has heard from countless faculty members concerned that their university’s DEI statement policy violates the First Amendment, academic freedom principles, or both. Numerous complaints have prompted FIRE’s intervention.

Our statement provides guidance to universities to ensure they respect faculty members’ expressive freedom when seeking to advance DEI.

FIRE recognizes that universities generally may pursue DEI-related initiatives, but at institutions bound by the First Amendment or their own promises of expressive freedom, those efforts must not threaten free speech or academic freedom. Our statement explains that the ideals of free speech and of diversity and inclusivity are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, the latter depends on the former: “When universities uphold expressive freedom, they allow a diversity of voices and perspectives to flourish and create space for dialogue across lines of identity and ideology.”

Social Media Censorship?

 Paul M. Barrett and J. Grant Sims have a report at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights titled "False Accusation:  The Unfounded Claim that  Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives."

The claim that social media companies censor conservatives has shaped debate about issues ranging from the fallout from the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot to reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms against liability for user posts and content moderation decisions. But the censorship claim is false, as our report demonstrates by analyzing available data and individual examples.

Why the Right Fears the Left

 Ross Douthat at NYT:

Let me try to elaborate on what this right is seeing. The initial promise of the internet era was radical decentralization, but instead over the last 20 years, America’s major cultural institutions have become consolidated, with more influence in the hands of fewer institutions. The decline of newsprint has made a few national newspapers ever more influential, the most-trafficked portions of the internet have fallen under the effective control of a small group of giant tech companies, and the patterns of meritocracy have ensured that the people staffing these institutions are drawn from the same self-reproducing professional class. (A similar trend may be playing out with vertical integration in the entertainment business, while in academia, a declining student population promises to close smaller colleges and solidify the power of the biggest, most prestigious schools.)

Over the same period, in reaction to social atomization, economic disappointment and conspicuous elite failure, the younger members of the liberal upper class have become radicalized, embracing a new progressive orthodoxy that’s hard to distill but easy to recognize and that really is deployed to threaten careers when the unconvinced step out of line.

...[The} spread of online conspiracy theories has encouraged liberals in a belief that the only way to safeguard democracy is for this consolidated establishment to become more aggressive in its attempts at cultural control — which is how you get the strange phenomenon of some journalists fretting about the perils of the First Amendment and demanding that the big social-media enterprises exert a kind of prior restraint over the American conversation.

Media Coverage of Race

Zach Goldbertg at Tablet:

Countless articles have been published in recent weeks, often under the guise of straight news reporting, in which journalists take for granted the legitimacy of novel theories about race and identity. Such articles illustrate a prevailing new political morality on questions of race and justice that has taken power at the Times and Post—a worldview sometimes abbreviated as “wokeness” that combines the sensibilities of highly educated and hyperliberal white professionals with elements of Black nationalism and academic critical race theory. But the media’s embrace of “wokeness” did not begin in response to the death of George Floyd. ...

...
There is a body of social science research arguing that shifts in race-related media coverage have a causal effect on racial attitudes. For instance, political scientist Paul Kellstedt has provided evidence showing that shifts in racial attitudes follow shifts in race-related news content. But, while building on Kellstedt’s findings, my own research suggests that not all demographics are equally or even similarly responsive to such media trends. Specifically, I find that the causal effects of race-related media coverage are strongest for white Democrats and liberals, weaker for nonwhite Democrats and liberals, and are largely nonexistent for white Republicans and conservatives. This differential effect is partly due to ideological differences in understandings of racial inequality, which influences how white liberals and conservatives respond (particularly in the moral-emotional sense) to related information.

Like Kellstedt, I compiled dozens of time series of racial attitudes—ranging from perceptions of discrimination and attributions of racial inequality to race-conscious policy attitudes—and ran them through an algorithm that was originally developed by James Stimson to generate singular aggregate indexes of general public policy liberalism. I then added the resulting “racial liberalism” index to my dataset of media term-usage, which provides the basis for the analysis in this article. While many of the terms were strongly correlated with the racial liberalism index, subsequent analysis showed that the latter was most uniquely associated with a scale (which I labeled the “Woke Term-Usage Index”) generated from the usage frequency of terms like, “privileged,” “systemic racism,” and “racial disparities,” in The New York Times.

 

Public Opinion, Media Bias, and Polarization

From the Knight Foundation:

For the 2020 American Views survey, Gallup and Knight polled more than 20,000 U.S. adults and found deepening pessimism and further partisan entrenchment about how the news media delivers on its democratic mandate for factual, trustworthy information. Many Americans feel the media’s critical role of informing and holding those in power accountable is compromised by increasing bias. As such, Americans have not only lost confidence in the ideal of an objective media, they believe news organizations actively support the partisan divide. At the same time, Americans have not lost sight of the value of news — strong majorities uphold the ideal that the news media is fundamental to a healthy democracy.

...

• Almost three-fourths of Republicans (71%) have a “very” or “somewhat” unfavorable opinion of the news media, compared to 22% of Democrats and 52% of independents.
• Democrats and Republicans differ greatly in their ratings of the media on every aspect of performance, including providing objective news reports, holding political and business leaders accountable for their actions and helping Americans stay informed about current affairs.
• Sixty-nine percent of Americans, including 61% of Democrats, say the increasing number of news sources reporting from a particular point of view is “a major problem.” In contrast, 77% of Republicans say the same.
• While a majority of Americans across the political spectrum (80%) say the media is under attack politically, they are divided as to whether those attacks are merited. Whereas 70% of Democrats say the media is under attack and those attacks are not justified, 61% of Republicans say such attacks are justified.
• In addition to partisan differences in media attitudes, views also vary by age, with older Americans generally more favorable toward the news media than younger Americans. Whereas 44% of Americans aged 65 and older have “very” or “somewhat” favorable views of the media, less than 1 in 5 Americans under age 30 (19%) say the same.

FULL REPORT HERE.

Self-Censorship

Emily Ekins at Cato:

A new Cato national survey finds that self‐​censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. The share of Americans who self‐​censor has risen several points since 2017 when 58% of Americans agreed with this statement.

These fears cross partisan lines. Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share.

 Strong liberals stand out, however, as the only political group who feel they can express themselves. Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of staunch liberals feel they can say what they believe. However, centrist liberals feel differently. A slim majority (52%) of liberals feel they have to self‐​censor, as do 64% of moderates, and 77% of conservatives. This demonstrates that political expression is an issue that divides the Democratic coalition between centrist Democrats and their left flank.

...
 Nearly a third (32%) of employed Americans say they personally are worried about missing out on career opportunities or losing their job if their political opinions became known. These results are particularly notable given that most personal campaign contributions to political candidates are public knowledge and can easily be found online.

And it’s not just one side of the political spectrum: 31% of liberals, 30% of moderates and 34% of conservatives are worried their political views could get them fired or harm their career trajectory. This suggests that it’s not necessarily just one particular set of views that has moved outside of acceptable public discourse. Instead these results are more consistent with a “walking on eggshells” thesis that people increasingly fear a wide range of political views could offend others or could negatively impact themselves.

These concerns are also cross‐​partisan, although more Republicans are worried: 28% of Democrats, 31% of independents, and 38% of Republicans are worried about how their political opinions could impact their career trajectories.

The Idea of the Op-Ed Page

In 2017, Jack Shafer wrote at Politico:

As susceptible as the next guy to hating the Times for running pieces I disagree with, I used as kindling to start a trash fire the recent Times page in which K-Sue Park informed the ACLU it needed to rethink free speech. Then, guided by a 2010 article about the history of the Times op-ed page written by University of Maine professor of journalism Michael Socolow, I returned to my senses. His deeply researched piece, “A Profitable Public Sphere: The Creation of the New York Times Op-Ed Page,” demonstrates that from the time its top editors started thinking about adding an op-ed section in the early 1960s, the whole idea was to trigger reader insurrections with outrageous views.

Before the Times op-ed page debuted on Sept. 21, 1970, obituaries occupied the page opposite the editorials. John B. Oakes, the Times editor who almost willed the page into existence, believed that a newspaper’s “deepest responsibility” was to make readers think. “The minute we begin to insist that everyone think the same way we think, our democratic way of life is in danger,” he said in a 1954 speech.

As the Times op-ed page took shape, its editors assembled a list of prospective authors and subjects they could address. One list, preserved in the Harrison Salisbury Papers at Columbia University, proposes soliciting pieces from Communist Party USA head Gus Hall, John Bircher Society leader Robert Welch, oil man and right-winger H.L. Hunt, labor radical Harry Bridges and revolutionary Angela Davis. The page’s concept was to express ideas and opinions the reader couldn’t find on the editorial page or elsewhere in the newspaper. The range and ambition of the page were such that one of the early editors on the page, John Van Doorn, tried (and failed) to hire Tupac Shakur’s mother, Afeni Shakur, as an editor in 1971, as Socolow writes elsewhere.

Replication and Studies of Ideology

Kevin Arceneaux and colleagues at Slate:

Our story starts in 2008, when a group of researchers published an article (here it is without a paywall) that found political conservatives have stronger physiological reactions to threatening images than liberals do. The article was published in Science, which is one of the most prestigious general science journals around. It’s the kind of journal that can make a career in academia.

The article was extremely influential. Arceneaux and colleagues tried to replicate the study, and could not.

We drafted a paper that reported the failed replication studies along with a more nuanced discussion about the ways in which physiology might matter for politics and sent it to Science. We did not expect Science to immediately publish the paper, but because our findings cast doubt on an influential study published in its pages, we thought the editorial team would at least send it out for peer review.

It did not. About a week later, we received a summary rejection with the explanation that the Science advisory board of academics and editorial team felt that since the publication of this article the field has moved on and that, while they concluded that we had offered a conclusive replication of the original study, it would be better suited for a less visible subfield journal.

...

Science requires us to have the courage to let our beautiful theories die public deaths at the hands of ugly facts. Indeed, our replication also failed to replicate part of a study published by one of us—Arceneaux and colleagues—which found that physiological reactions to disgusting images correlated with immigration attitudes. Our takeaway is not that the original study’s researchers did anything wrong. To the contrary, members of the original author team—Kevin Smith, John Hibbing, John Alford and Matthew Hibbing—were very supportive of the entire process, a reflection of the understanding that science requires us to go where the facts lead us. If only journals like Science were willing to lead the way.

The problem is not necessarily one of political bias, but rather an academic bias against replication studies.   It is much more exciting to announce finding X than to announce years later that finding X was not really accurate.

Big Chill on Campus

Many posts have discussed the controversy over bias in higher education.

Samuel J. Abrams at Minding the Campus:

In 2017, I asked a national sample of faculty and administrators, “How often, if at all, have you avoided expressing a particular point of view on an issue because you expected a negative reaction from other students or faculty?’ Two-thirds of conservative professors stated that they simply avoided sharing their opinions because of fear of negative reactions compared to just one-third of liberals. This significant difference is strong evidence that viewpoint diversity is being silenced. Conservative professors – an endangered minority on campus – are well aware of the possible ramifications of sharing their views and fear professional repercussions for disagreeing with their liberal faculty and administrative colleagues.

Although Sarah Lawrence is proud of its extremely liberal bent, it turns out that I had a target on my back on my first day of teaching. I was told by various colleagues shortly after joining the community that I was a “diversity hire” because I was not an extreme progressive but an empirical social scientist who cares about facts and empirics and leans to the right. I could feel the derision and suspicion almost immediately from my colleagues, and relations deteriorated over time because I failed to virtue signal strongly enough to many. Working on the Sarah Lawrence campus began to feel like some uncomfortable high-school movie with powerful cliques and groups and me as the outcast. I would walk on campus and pass groups of faculty who would turn away as my views were regularly marginalized or ignored in various faculty and administrative settings

Six Forms of Media Bias

David Leonhardt at NYT identifies six forms of media bias:

• Centrist bias. In her column, Sullivan inveighs against the bias toward political centrism and notes that it often crowds out thought-provoking political views on both the left and right. She also calls out a related problem, bothsidesism: blaming the parties equally, even when they don't deserve equal blame. ...
• Affluent bias...  National journalists, the ones who often set the agenda, spend a fair amount of time around wealthy people, and national journalists themselves tend to be more affluent than most Americans. A classic example: At a 2008 Democratic primary debate, a then-anchor at ABC News anchor, Charlie Gibson, suggested that a middle class family in New Hampshire might make $200,000 a year. The audience laughed.
• Bias for the new. Journalists often confuse newness with importance. The problem lurks in the product’s name: “News.” Too often, we emphasize relatively trivial stories — like candidates taking verbal swipes at each other — over more important ones, like the candidates’ tax policy, as New York University’s Jay Rosen has argued. In the 2016 presidential debates, for instance, the moderators almost completely ignored climate change....
• The same biases that afflict society. From sexism in political reporting (“likability”) to racism in crime coverage (the “crack baby” stereotype), the media often suffers from the same biases that other Americans do. But we could certainly be doing more to fight back. Female and nonwhite voices remain underrepresented at major publications.
• Liberal bias. Yes, it’s real. Most mainstream journalists do lean left. Political reporters and Washington reporters are usually professional enough to keep these views from affecting their coverage...But on issue-based coverage, liberal bias exists. Education reform — the media’s frequent hostility toward charter schools — is one example. My colleague Ross Douthat makes his case about liberal bias on this week’s episode of “The Argument” podcast. As you will hear, I partly agreed with him and partly pushed back. Michelle Goldberg disagreed with him more fully. It was a good debate.
• Conservative bias. It’s real, too. Fox News and talk radio are huge, influential parts of the media. They skew hard right, and they often present their readers with misleading or outright false information, be it “birtherism” or conspiracy theories.

Most Americans Think Media Do Not Understand Them

Jeffrey Gottffried and Elizabeth Grieco at Pew:

A majority of Americans believe the news media do not understand people like them, and this feeling is especially common among Republicans, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

Overall, 58% of U.S. adults feel the news media do not understand people like them, while 40% feel they are understood, as reported in a recent Pew Research Center study.

Republicans, however, are nearly three times as likely to feel that news organizations don’t understand them (73%) as they are to say they feel understood (25%). By comparison, most Democrats (58%) say they feel understood by the news media, while four-in-ten say they do not.

Not only are Republicans far more likely to feel misunderstood by the news media, they feel this way regardless of their media habits and demographic characteristics, according to the analysis of data collected Feb. 22 to March 4, 2018, among 5,035 U.S. adults.

About three-quarters of Republicans who are very interested in the news (74%) say news organizations do not understand people like them – about the same share as among those who are somewhat interested (70%) and not interested in the news (78%).

Attitudes Toward the Media, 2018

From Pew:

Americans are particularly divided politically on whether or not they think news media criticism keeps political leaders in line – the so-called “watchdog role” of the news media. A vast majority of Democrats (82%) say in the survey conducted earlier this year that they support the news media’s watchdog role, believing that news media criticism keeps political leaders from doing things that shouldn’t be done. On the other hand, the majority of Republicans (58%) think news media criticism gets in the way of political leaders doing their job.

The 44-percentage-point gap between Democratic and Republican support for the watchdog role (82% vs. 38% respectively), along with the 47-point difference last year, are the largest measured by Pew Research Center in the more than three decades the question has been asked. In contrast, members of the two parties were about equally likely to support the news media’s watchdog role in 2016 during the Obama administration.

Most Americans also continue to think the news media favor one side when covering political and social issues. About two-thirds (68%) say this, compared with three-in-ten who say they deal fairly with all sides. And as in previous years, Republicans (86%) are far more likely than Democrats (52%) to say news organizations favor one side.

Further, the findings reveal low levels of trust in social media as a source for news and information among the public and members of both parties. While one-in-five Americans (21%) have a lot of trust in the information they get from national news organizations, that share is about five times as high as the portion that have a lot of trust in the information they get from social media sites (4%). And few Republicans or Democrats express a lot of trust in the information they get from social media (3% and 6%, respectively).

Bias at Facebook

Kate Conger and Sheera Frenkel at NYT:

The post went up quietly on Facebook’s internal message board last week. Titled “We Have a Problem With Political Diversity,” it quickly took off inside the social network.

“We are a political monoculture that’s intolerant of different views,” Brian Amerige, a senior Facebook engineer, wrote in the post, which was obtained by The New York Times. “We claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology.”

Since the post went up, more than 100 Facebook employees have joined Mr. Amerige to form an online group called FB’ers for Political Diversity, according to two people who viewed the group’s page and who were not authorized to speak publicly. The aim of the initiative, according to Mr. Amerige’s memo, is to create a space for ideological diversity within the company.

Poll on Media Bias and Accuracy

From the Knight Foundation:

A Feb. 5-March 11, 2018, Gallup/Knight Foundation survey of 1,440 Gallup Panel members assessed how pervasive U.S. adults believe bias in news reporting is, and whether they make distinctions between bias and inaccuracy.

The survey also probed for Americans’ reactions when they see biased or inaccurate reporting and sought to determine if the reactions depend on whether that reporting is about groups or individuals they support or oppose. Among the key findings in the survey:

• Overall, Americans believe 62% of the news they see on television, read in newspapers and hear on the radio is biased. They are much more inclined to see news on social media as biased, estimating that 80% of the news they see there is biased.
• Americans tend to think the majority of news reporting is accurate, but they still believe a substantial percentage of it, 44%, is inaccurate. They think 64% of news on social media is inaccurate.
• More than eight in 10 U.S. adults report being angry or bothered by seeing biased information. A slightly greater proportion of Americans — more than nine in 10 — get angry or bothered by inaccurate information.
• In rating various news organizations, Americans make little distinction between bias and accuracy — generally, those that are perceived as biased are also perceived as inaccurate, and those that are perceived as unbiased are perceived as being accurate.
• Republicans’ and Democrats’ ratings of the accuracy and bias of certain news organizations diverge sharply, most notably with respect to Fox News®, Breitbart News®, CNN® and MSNBC®.