It's natural to expect a political bent in news media these days. CNN and MSNBC often appeal to a more liberal demographic while Fox News viewers tend to skew conservative (Jurkowitz & Mitchell, 2020). It's rather common knowledge. The outbreak of COVID-19 helped highlight some of the differences in each outlet's viewers.
Pew Research Center (Jurkowitz & Mitchell, 2020) conducted a study of viewers of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. The study found that viewers who view Fox News are less likely to believe that the virus originated in nature than viewers of the other two networks. The study also found that viewers of Fox News tend to say that the media has done a poorer job in general of covering news about the virus and that the media has exaggerated its risk to the public.
 |
| From Pew Research Center |
What these studies show is how the news media reinforce the political divide in the U.S. We can see how a seemingly non-political event can be turned into a political one based on how people perceive news media in relation to their own personal political leanings. In addition, our expectations of the news media as politically-motivated entities informs our own bias about them. Viewers of Fox News tend to be more critical of the media because the messaging of most mainstream media outlets don't match up with their personal beliefs.
Reference
Jurkowitz, M. & Mitchell, A. (2020, April 1). Cable TV and COVID-19: How Americans perceive the outbreak and view media coverage differ by main news source. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.journalism.org/2020/04/01/cable-tv-and-covid-19-how-americans-perceive-the-outbreak-and-view-media-coverage-differ-by-main-news-source/
No comments:
Post a Comment