Pew: Partisan Divide Widens on Role of Media

Amidst the cries of "fake news" leveled at major media outlets by the President, a new Pew Research Center survey finds a deep partisan divide over the role of the news media in holding the country's leaders to account, while trust in local news trumps national by a small margin and social media lags far behind.

Overwhelmingly (89%), Democrats say news media criticism keeps political leaders from doing things they shouldn't, while only 42% of Republicans say that is the case. That 47-percentage point gap is the largest in three decades of polling on that question. That compares to only a 3-point gap in 2016, when 77% of Republicans said the press was keeping leaders from doing things they shouldn't, and 74% of Democrats said the same.

When it comes to perceived bias, 87% of Republicans say news organizations "tend to favor one side," with 53% of Democrats saying that is the case. 

The news media doesn't get much love from either side when it comes to whether their information is "very trustworthy." Only 11% of Republicans say it is, down from 15% in 2016. Only a third of Democrats (34%) say it is, up slightly from 27% in 2016. 

They also do not get very high marks for doing "very well" at keeping people informed. Only 18% of Republicans say that is the case for national media, and 22% say that is the case for local media. For Democrats, 33% say that is the case for national media, but only 29% say that's the case for local media. 

And as the FCC collects data on the competitiveness of mobile for broadband use, the study found that nearly half (45%) often get news on a mobile device, up from 36% in 2016. The numbers were up for all political persuasions polled, with 52% of Democrats saying they often get news from a mobile device, up from 37% in 2016; 40% of Republicans saying they often get news from a mobile device, up from 36% in 2016; and 41% of independents saying they do so, up from 36% in 2016. 

Local news gets slightly higher trust scores than national—85% say they trust local news a lot (25%) or at least some (60%).

But social media continues to be taken with more than a few grains of salt. Only 5% trust it a lot, and 33% trust it some. 

The study was conducted March 13-17 among 4,151 adults. The full sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.