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Sunday, May 3rd, 2020

Does News Diet Influence Views Toward the News Media?

Author:     ZACC RITTER
Source:     The Gallup Organization
Publication Date:     APRIL 27, 2020
 Link: Does News Diet Influence Views Toward the News Media?
Stephan:   As a country, the United States is being fundamentally, and perhaps irrevocably, altered because media is no longer required to be grounded in facts. In fact, very lucrative and influential operations now dominate much of the news and they explicitly gaslight and propagandize through disinformation the less intelligent members of our society.  What this means is spelled out in this well-conducted Gallup Organization survey.

Americans’ news consumption habits are deeply polarized. Liberals tend to use a certain set of news sources; conservatives, another set. A recent series of Gallup/Knight Foundation surveys, including interviews with more than 13,500 U.S. adults, finds that polarized news media habits seem to have an independent effect on the way Americans view the news media.

News consumption diet — the top news sources people use — is strongly related to opinions about the news media. Only 3% of Americans with a conservative news diet have a “very favorable” or “favorable” opinion of the media, compared with 56% of those with a liberal news diet and 34% with a mixed news diet. For more information on how Gallup categorizes news diets, see the online appendix (PDF download).

A similar relationship exists between news diet and trust in national news organizations, suggesting that favorability of the news media and trust in national news organizations measure the same underlying attitudes. Meanwhile, 27% of those with a conservative news diet express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in local news […]

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