Partisan Media Spheres

American Political Segregation, Vocabulary and Intentions

By Gregory Aderhold Edited by Quinn Bunke

In order to understand shifts in the agora of modern American politics, we must analyze the American political environment through multiple lenses. The most recent wave of change in the American political arena stems from vast economic inequality, the domestic insecurity of American foreign policy and changing ideals of what it means to be a citizen of a community when the makeup of American identity, due to changing immigration demographics, have reshaped the image of the average American. However, the lens through which these changes are recognized is equally as important. Despite a consensus that these changes are occurring, the perception of them and action addressing them by American political organizations are not collaborative. In seeking to understand American politics, it is important to understand the role that these facts play in a larger discussion surrounding political bias and separation in the general media.

The concept of media partisanship should be analyzed to explain some of the friction currently playing out across the nation. Before elaborating, it must be acknowledged that this process says nothing about the actual quality of American wellbeing: A nation can be united in its self-destruction and disjointed in its own prosperity. The focus of this article is on a separation of vocabulary. This separation of vocabulary detaches the viewer from the reporting and actions of other news sources. These news sources explain and observe different events occurring in the country in different manners, creating distinct and rivaling political narratives. This separation increases political partisanship and splits the bed of truth on which prosperous debate relies.

The members of the two political organizations that hold duopolistic powers of American political affairs have recorded rivaling preferences of the media. In a January 2020 study, Pew Centre discovered that more Republican Party members, who have preferences for the Fox News Network, “express distrust than express trust of 20 of the 30 sources asked about. Only seven outlets generate more trust than distrust among Republicans.”136 Democrats view the opposite as being true as “greater portions of Democrats express trust than express distrust in 22 of the 30 sources asked about.”137 These trusted sources are also the inverses of each other on many key issues. Among conservative Republicans, 75% stated that they trusted Fox News, while 77% of liberal Democrats distrust Fox News. Inversely, 70% of liberals trust CNN while 67% of conservative Republicans distrust it.138 This polarity is bound to create collision as the source of the debate is on partisan grounds. Pew Centre discovered in the same poll that among Democrats, 53% have received news in the last week from CNN, 33% from MSNBC, 31% read the New York's Time, 26% read the Washington Post and 22% watched BBC news.139 This is compared to 24%, 14%, 9%, 8% and 10% respectively of Republicans.140 Among

136 Mitchell, Amy, Mark Jurkowitz, Elisa Shearer, and Mason Walker, “U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided” January 24, 2020. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid. 140 Ibid.

Republicans, 60% received their news in the last week from the Fox news channel, 19% from Hannity Radio and 17% from Limbaugh radio.141 Amongst Democratic Party members, these figures are 23%, 1% and 1% respectively.142 It should be noted that while the partisanship seems steady there is a group of new sources which both Democrats and Republicans rely on, however, it must be noted that Republicans do trail Democrats in their usage of each of these sources. These sources are NBC news, ABC news, CBS news, the Wall street Journal, and USA today. For each of these sources, Republicans trail Democrats in reported news usage in the last week by a percentage that is significant but not drastic.

Divided is the house on which the United States is structured. Most viewers, most of the time, aren't exposed to a large swath of dissenting opinions, and most will never realize what they don’t know. If the media is segmented, then the viewers will become increasingly uninformed as complexity in debate and argument is absent. Most liberals are never exposed to the views of political actors on Fox and most conservatives are never exposed to the political views of actors on CNN and MSNBC. When an inherently partisan media is dealt with coverage of a controversial election, it is not difficult to see why this would lead to extreme political dispute.

When dealing with important but partisan issues, the average viewer knows little about the complex Iran-American relations and their effects on the balance of powers in central Asia and the middle east. Few Americans have the economic understanding to determine why the economy falls into crisis and few understand the complex economic reality behind environmental policies and the complexity that a fuel, such as natural gas, adds to such policies. In the current presidential election, every issue and scandal are divided among a public that is equally divided. When large swaths of a population are never exposed to a rivaling worldview and largely garner their information from large entertainment companies, then the opinions and vocabulary of their peers will become alien and political discourse will flounder. When on the simplest of matters, politics become sensationalist, conspiracy theories influential, and politicians inept, America becomes increasingly separated into two different realities, where a presidential election is less a referendum and more a matchbox.

141 Ibid. 142 Ibid.