Rieder: The political news bubble

If the late Democratic senator and Washington wise man Daniel Patrick Moynihan were alive today, he'd probably be issuing a correction.

Moynihan was known for, among many other things, his maxim, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."

But a new study from the Pew Research Center shows that a significant and influential chunk of the American populace lives in a media bubble in which they encounter only facts, or more accurately "facts," with which they agree.

"When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds," the report states. "There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust."

And that's not good news for democracy.

We are a nation with a growing number of people who aren't open to debate. They know what the answers are, and they want them reinforced. They gravitate to venues where never is heard a discouraging word about their take.

The study found that about 20% of Americans identify themselves as hard-core liberals or conservatives. That's a minority, But that's twice as many people who identified themselves that way a decade ago, says Amy Mitchell, the Pew Research Center's director of journalism research. So we've got a fifth of our citizens living in a news bubble.

What's more, Pew says, this group has an impact that goes well beyond the actual number. Pew says that 20% have "a greater impact on the political process than do those with more mixed ideological views. They are the most likely to vote, donate to campaigns and participate directly in politics."

And, says Mitchell, they tend to be "influencers," who can shape the views of others.

Years back, the goal of much of the American media was to play it straight down the middle. Newspapers and network news operations bent over backward to avoid appearing partisan. And so everyone was consuming the same news. But as the American public has become more polarized along ideological lines, so have their media.

The huge success of Fox News showed that there was a serious market out there hungry for news with a rightward tilt. Ultimately MSNBC carved out an identity as its equivalent for the left.

In the digital era, with a seemingly infinite number of news and opinion sources, building that bubble is hardly a challenge.

A previous Pew survey documented the increasing division of the American people. "Now we see it playing out in people's media habits," Mitchell says. "It's another layer."

The survey, not surprisingly, found that conservatives are "tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics." Conservatives also said they distrusted more than they trusted 24 of the 36 news sources cited in the report.

On Facebook, conservatives are more likely than those in other political categories to encounter opinions reflecting their own. And they are more likely to have friends — not Facebook friends but actual friends — who share their views.

There's no real Fox equivalent for liberals. Fifteen percent listed CNN as their go-to news source, followed by NPR (13%), MSNBC (12%) and The New York Times (10%). CNN was also No. 1 for those with mostly liberal and mixed views, while those in the mostly conservative camp opted for Fox.

One cool tidbit: People with consistently liberal views have no sense of humor when it comes to dissent. They are "more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or 'defriend' someone on a social network — as well as to end a personal friendship — because of politics," the report said.

Altogether, says Mitchell, "We see a political information environment more oriented around furthering divide rather than enabling cohesion."

And so the forecast calls for gridlock for the foreseeable future.