Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum
Where do Americans get their news about politics and government? And how does the media environment intersect with political polarization? A Pew Research Center study based on a representative online survey finds striking differences in news habits along the ideological spectrum.
Explore the data:
Consumers of Consume
Audience compared to all Web respondents
Source: American Trends Panel (wave 1). Survey conducted March 19-April 29, 2014. Based on all Web respondents (representative of the 89% of Americans with internet access). Each graphic shows the ideological distribution of all respondents who got news about government and politics from the source over the course of a week. Sizes of each graphic reflect the relative sizes of their audiences, which can also be seen in the reference graphic on the top right of the page. (Overall N=2,901; sample sizes for consumers of each source available upon request.) Ideological consistency based on a scale of 10 political values questions.
Updated 10/21/14: Graphic updated to align visual representation of five segments of ideological spectrum with underlying data. All data labels and percentages are unchanged.
Where do Americans get their political news, and how does this search for information differ across the conservative to liberal spectrum? Panelists were asked whether, over the course of the previous week, they got news about government and politics from each of the 36 sources listed below for news about government and politics. The sortable table shows where the left, right and those in between go to learn about what's going on in Washington and across the nation.
Consumption of News Sources
% of respondents who got news about politics and government in the previous week from each source
Source | Overall | Consistently liberal | Mostly liberal | Mixed | Mostly conservative | Consistently conservative |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
CNN | 44% | 52% | 48% | 49% | 32% | 20% |
Fox News | 39% | 10% | 24% | 39% | 61% | 84% |
ABC News | 37% | 33% | 38% | 42% | 32% | 26% |
NBC News | 37% | 37% | 44% | 40% | 29% | 21% |
CBS News | 29% | 30% | 32% | 32% | 24% | 22% |
MSNBC | 27% | 38% | 32% | 25% | 23% | 13% |
Yahoo News | 24% | 16% | 25% | 27% | 25% | 17% |
Google News | 22% | 18% | 23% | 26% | 19% | 13% |
NPR | 20% | 53% | 23% | 12% | 10% | 8% |
BBC | 17% | 34% | 21% | 12% | 8% | 10% |
PBS | 17% | 37% | 18% | 12% | 10% | 7% |
New York Times | 13% | 33% | 15% | 8% | 7% | 5% |
Huffington Post | 13% | 29% | 15% | 8% | 8% | 10% |
Daily Show | 12% | 34% | 14% | 7% | 4% | 1% |
USA TODAY | 12% | 13% | 13% | 11% | 13% | 11% |
Colbert Report | 10% | 26% | 12% | 6% | 5% | 1% |
Wall Street Journal | 10% | 12% | 10% | 7% | 13% | 16% |
Sean Hannity Show | 9% | 1% | 0% | 3% | 19% | 45% |
Rush Limbaugh Show | 8% | 1% | 0% | 3% | 17% | 43% |
Washington Post | 8% | 17% | 9% | 4% | 5% | 6% |
Glenn Beck Program | 6% | 1% | 0% | 2% | 13% | 34% |
TheBlaze | 5% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 10% | 29% |
Drudge Report | 5% | 1% | 1% | 2% | 10% | 20% |
Politico | 4% | 12% | 3% | 2% | 4% | 4% |
Al Jazeera America | 4% | 12% | 5% | 2% | 1% | 2% |
Bloomberg | 4% | 5% | 4% | 3% | 5% | 5% |
BuzzFeed | 4% | 8% | 5% | 3% | 3% | 0% |
New Yorker | 3% | 10% | 3% | 1% | 1% | 0% |
Breitbart | 3% | 1% | 1% | 1% | 5% | 16% |
Economist | 3% | 7% | 4% | 2% | 2% | 2% |
Guardian | 3% | 9% | 4% | 2% | 1% | 1% |
Slate | 3% | 9% | 2% | 1% | 1% | 0% |
Mother Jones* | 2% | 10% | 2% | 1% | 0% | 0% |
Ed Schultz Show* | 2% | 8% | 1% | 0% | 0% | 1% |
Daily Kos* | 2% | 9% | 1% | 0% | 0% | 1% |
ThinkProgress* | 1% | 6% | 1% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Source: American Trends Panel (wave 1). Survey conducted March 19-April 29, 2014. Based on all Web respondents (representative of the 89% of Americans with internet access). (Overall N=2,901; see About the Study for sample sizes of each ideological group.) Respondents were asked which (of 36 sources for news about government and politics) they have heard of, trust, distrust and got news from in the past week. Ideological consistency based on a scale of 10 political values questions. To see audience profiles, click each source. *Note that ThinkProgress, Daily Kos, Mother Jones and The Ed Schultz Show do not have audience profiles because the sample sizes for these audiences are too small to analyze.