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 Overall
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.
For each of the news media sources listed below, respondents were asked whether they have heard of the outlet, gone there for news in the past week, and whether they consider it trustworthy. Not surprisingly, by virtue of their greater familiarity, the most well-known sources also tend to be the sources trusted and consumed by the greatest percentage of political news consumers. Overall, panelists trust more sources than they distrust.
Media Habits
% of respondents who...
Source | Have heard of | Got news from | Trust | Distrust |
---|---|---|---|---|
CNN | 95% | 44% | 54% | 20% |
ABC News | 94% | 37% | 50% | 17% |
NBC News | 94% | 37% | 50% | 19% |
CBS News | 93% | 29% | 46% | 17% |
Fox News | 93% | 39% | 44% | 37% |
MSNBC | 89% | 27% | 38% | 22% |
PBS | 88% | 17% | 38% | 12% |
BBC | 76% | 17% | 36% | 7% |
New York Times | 85% | 13% | 34% | 17% |
USA TODAY | 90% | 12% | 33% | 13% |
Wall Street Journal | 82% | 10% | 31% | 10% |
NPR | 53% | 20% | 29% | 9% |
Washington Post | 80% | 8% | 27% | 14% |
Google News | 71% | 22% | 25% | 11% |
Yahoo News | 80% | 24% | 20% | 16% |
Huffington Post | 66% | 13% | 18% | 17% |
Daily Show | 64% | 12% | 16% | 18% |
Colbert Report | 62% | 10% | 15% | 16% |
New Yorker | 65% | 3% | 14% | 10% |
Economist | 34% | 3% | 12% | 2% |
Sean Hannity Show | 45% | 9% | 12% | 21% |
Rush Limbaugh Show | 66% | 8% | 12% | 39% |
Bloomberg | 60% | 4% | 11% | 8% |
Glenn Beck Program | 49% | 6% | 10% | 24% |
Al Jazeera America | 42% | 4% | 9% | 16% |
Drudge Report | 34% | 5% | 8% | 9% |
Guardian | 36% | 3% | 7% | 4% |
Politico | 32% | 4% | 7% | 5% |
TheBlaze | 18% | 5% | 6% | 3% |
Mother Jones* | 22% | 2% | 6% | 5% |
Breitbart | 15% | 3% | 4% | 4% |
Slate | 21% | 3% | 4% | 3% |
Ed Schultz Show* | 15% | 2% | 3% | 5% |
BuzzFeed | 31% | 4% | 2% | 8% |
Daily Kos* | 12% | 2% | 2% | 3% |
ThinkProgress* | 9% | 1% | 2% | 2% |
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.