Liberals Are Less Insular Than Conservatives...When They Consume CBS and NBC and NPR?

October 21st, 2014 5:32 PM

Political reporter Aaron Blake at The Washington Post puts an aggressive spin on the latest numbers from the Pew Research Center on the media consumed by conservatives and liberals. It’s stilted to suggest conservatives get all their “news” from talk-radio hosts, while liberals prefer “mainstream tastes” like NPR and the Big Three networks.

Blake claimed Pew found “when you compare the left to the right, it's clear which side is more interested in consuming news from sources with which it agrees politically.” The flaw here is thinking that liberals aren’t consuming liberal news at ABC, CBS, NBC, and NPR.

Even if you grant the conservative objections to the mainstream media, though, it's clear the most conservative Americans are getting much more of their news from commentators rather than news-driven Web sites. Not even the Drudge Report or Breitbart -- news sites with a conservative worldview -- crack the top 10.

On the left, MSNBC doesn't carry near the same weight as Fox with "consistent liberals." Just 38 percent say they had consumed news from the liberal-leaning cable news outlet. These Americans have more mainstream tastes, consuming news from NPR (53 percent), CNN (52 percent), local TV (39 percent), NBC News and PBS (37 percent apiece), the BBC (34 percent), ABC News and the New York Times (33 percent apiece).

Actually, a chart in Blake's blog shows that among “consistent liberals,” NPR is their favorite news source, the anti-Fox News. Would Blake care to explain why Fox News watchers have to pay for NPR, but NPR fanatics don’t have to subsidize Fox News or conservative nonprofit news operations?

Pew's methodology seems intended to blur news and opinion sources. I would answer this survey by saying Rush Limbaugh is not a news show. The Drudge Report is not a news site. (Neither is Google News, which is also included.)

At least Blake admits that the sites conservatives admire are ignored by the “mainstream” media:
“Clearly, though, there is a portion of the Republican Party -- the base, we would argue -- that consumes news from very different sources than the rest of America. And these are sources that other Americans (and the lamestream/mainstream media) tend not to understand or pay attention to.”

He did not say “Clearly the mainstream media has an image problem that they might want to fix.” Notice how the “mainstream media” always lecture Republicans on how they have to move beyond their base, but the liberal media never has do the same?