With the 2020 presidential election on the horizon, a recent survey has indicated that the gaps between how Republicans and Democrats view national media outlets such as CNN and Fox News continue to spread, solidifying the country’s partisan echo chambers with no change in sight. Morning Consult reported "12 of this year’s 15 most politically polarizing brands are national news outlets."
In an article posted on Tuesday by Joanna Piacenza, senior data editor for the Morning Consult company, she began with criticism of the president:
As President Donald Trump continues his relentless attacks on the mainstream media, the gap between how Republicans and Democrats view national media brands such as CNN and Fox News continues to widen, solidifying the country’s partisan echo chambers as the next presidential cycle nears.
News outlets make up 12 of the 15 most politically polarizing brands, out of the more than 3,700 brands that Morning Consult tracks daily.
Trump Hotels were the most divisive business brand, with an 86 percent difference in favorability between Democrats and Republicans. CNN and Fox News were next.
“The difference between ... favorability for CNN, for example, stood at 66 percentage points last year,” Piacenza noted. ”It grew 14 points to 80 this year, due to a 12-point drop in net favorability among Republicans.”
People in the GOP “held more negative views than Democrats of every media outlet on the list except for Fox News,” she continued.
The only other non-media brands on the list were Smith & Wesson, and Nike (at #15).
“It is fair to say that the media reacted to Trump’s election with alarm,” Matt Grossman, an associate political science professor at Michigan State University, noted in understatement.
That reaction also “changed the tenor of its coverage in a way that that made the Democrats think the media is more important and made Republicans think it was more biased,” Grossman added.
“In a way, it’s really corroboration of the narrative in the industry right now,” said Joe Barone, managing partner of Brand Safety Americas for GroupM, a media buying firm. “The narrative is that we’re living in a polarized world,” Barone indicated, “and media is both contributing to the polarization and reflective of the polarization.”
Nevertheless, Piacenza added, “for the major media outlets that have embraced a more adversarial stance on Trump since his election, business has been good.”
“Viewership for all three leading cable news networks -- CNN, Fox News and MSNBC -- increased in 2018,” she stated while referring to a Pew Research Center analysis.
“For the three, total revenue and total profit both increased by four percent in 2018,” Piacenza noted. “The uptick in revenue was part of a 36 percent surge since 2015, from $3.87 billion to $5.26 billion.”
She added gleefully: “The New York Times, the fourth most divisive brand on the list and a habitual punching bag for Trump, posted record print and digital subscriptions.”
The author concluded the article by quoting Grossman, who stated that the current climate gives the media two options: “They can embrace a role as an ideologically defined media outlet or try to remain nonpartisan -- a stance that’s more difficult to take, especially in the eyes of conservatives.”
