Fred, I subscribe to David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. He wrote today about this very subject. I’ve done a cut and paste so I hope it all comes through here, and sorry David C. There was no other way to share.
Our Land
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN
A Bad Formula for Democracy: Voter Ignorance and Media Fragmentation
By David Corn November 26, 2024
Donald Trump supporters jeer at news reporters at a rally for Trump in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 2024. Francis Chung/Politico/AP
Donald Trump supporters jeer at news reporters at a rally for Trump in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 2024. Francis Chung/Politico/AP
Three weeks before the election, Ipsos released polling data that was rather disturbing. The research and consulting firm presented a stark and unsurprising conclusion: “We live in two Americas.” It noted that the information ecosystem had much to do with this divide:
Partisanship has created a deep divide among Americans on politics and beyond. However, beneath partisanship, media source is also significantly correlated with Americans’ views.
Americans’ primary news source plays into what they believe to be true, their own daily personal economic situation, and ultimately, how they view former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
This was an obvious observation. The two sides in the tribalistic face-off of American politics have vastly different sources of news and information. But the data Ipsos presented revealed a much sharper split: One side is more ignorant than the other. Fox News and conservative media consumers, it stated, are “less likely to answer questions about inflation, immigration and crime correctly.” Of the Fox and conservative media crowd, only about 12 percent said it was true that inflation had declined in the past year and was near the historic average. About two-thirds of respondents who primarily received their news from national newspapers and other cable news outlets got this right. Ditto on crime. Only 10 percent of the Fox folks knew that violent crimes rates were not at or near all-time highs in most major American cities, and most believed that crime rates were soaring. Sixty-five percent of newspaper readers and other cable news consumers held an accurate view. As for social media, the poll showed that Americans who mainly got their news in this cosmos were also quite misinformed.
All this, naturally, influenced the choice of candidates for voters. Ipsos reported that “Americans who have correct information on current political issues” were more likely to say Vice President Kamala Harris was “stronger on policy areas” than Donald Trump. Among those voters with accurate views on inflation, crime, immigration, and the stock market, Harris won overwhelming majorities. Trump was the favorite of the misinformed.
There’s been a tsunami of after-the-fact supposin’ about the election. But this poll showed that a major fault line in American politics is ignorance. Amidst the yapping about how the Democrats need to revive their connection to working-class voters (meaning, white working-class voters) and debate about whether the party has gone too far to the left or has been overly tethered to centrism and neoliberalism (whatever that may be), this data indicates that a fundamental challenge for the Democrats and others is how to operate within a media ecosystem that not only is fractured but that propagates and reinforces much false information. Can an ideological shift (in either direction) matter, if so many voters lack an accurate picture of reality?
When I attended a Trump rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, the day before the election, I spoke to diehard Trump supporters and found many of them echoing his talking points: Crime was at record levels; millions of immigrants were pouring over the border every month; the economy was in worse condition than ever before. And Democrats were deliberately destroying the nation. None of this was true. When I gently asked these Trumpers if they were concerned that retired generals who had worked with Trump during his first presidency now described him as a “fascist” and a threat to democracy, at least a third said they were unaware of these statements. The others replied that these Trump detractors were being paid to say this, or they were envious of Trump, or they were his political enemies. No one accepted these remarks as good-faith criticisms of Trump. It didn’t matter what the New York Times or Washington Post reported.
Then it hit me. For these people, Trump was their media. Maybe they watched Fox or Newsmax. Or read Breitbart. Or scanned the social media posts of Elon Musk and other MAGA personalities. But they saw Trump as the paramount source of information. What he said was what was true—and certainly more accurate than the “fake news” of the New York Times, CNN, or NBC News. In Trump they trust. Not merely as a politician but as the supplier of news and information, as their guide to the world. If he said millions of criminal migrants were flooding across the border, you can believe it. If he said the economy was worse now than it ever had been, bank on that. Let’s call this what it is: a bubble. And there’s no way for mainstream news outlets to penetrate it.
How to reach voters has always been a fundamental question of politics. Not too long ago, the answer was simple: TV ads. A lot of people watched a lot of television, and there were only a few channels. You could reach people where they lived—in the living room in front of a television set. With the rise of social media and the fragmentation of media, it’s tougher for campaigns to target voters. This year, the Trump campaign, as many have noted, devoted much attention to the audience of aggrieved men—what has become known as “the manosphere”—through podcasters like Joe Rogan and social media.
As more voters obtain their information from sources outside the news media, they’re more likely to be recipients of inaccurate or skewed news. This is not to say that the traditional news outlets always are on target. But I’ll go out on the limb and say that generally journalists are going to be more mindful of facts than podcasters or social media influencers who primarily are talkers and posters (and sometimes shit-posters) frequently determined to build audiences through outrage, not verified and solid information. These new-media guys and gals are not edited or fact-checked. Certainly, some are responsible and intelligent commentators, analysts, and presenters of news. But the most popular often succeed because they strike emotional chords with viewers, listeners, and scrollers.
These far-from-reliable information sources have become increasingly impactful. This month, the Pew Research Center released a report noting that one in five Americans—or about 20 percent—received their news from influencers on social media. (An influencer, Pew decided, is a person who regularly posts about current events on social media and has at least 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, or YouTube. Yes, that makes me an influencer.) The figure for Americans under 30 was almost double: 37 percent. Almost two-thirds of news influencers are men. Twenty-seven percent identify as pro-Trump, Republican, or conservative, as opposed to 21 percent who are liberal or Democratic.
The dominance of news influencers and non-traditional news sources will likely expand in the coming years. Will this lead to a better-informed electorate? Will their presence make it easier for political candidates to counter the spread of misinformation or disinformation? The more unchecked sources of information there are, the greater the likelihood that misinformed views will spread and distort the national discourse. “We are the media,” Elon Musk, the boy-king billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter) and one of the most prominent promoters of disinformation, exclaims. If so, we’re in deep doo-doo. With the information ecosystem shifting more toward trolling than journalism, Democrats and the news media itself need to ponder how best to confront this dynamic.
It certainly sounds elitist to gripe about voter ignorance and perhaps naive to suggest that a better-informed electorate will lead to better outcomes. After all, politics often is not about facts. Voter feelings and attitudes—vibes—have always mattered in elections. But what’s noteworthy and perhaps (relatively) new these days is the interaction between media dissolution and voter misinformation. Within the fragmented media landscape, misinformation (and disinformation) can easily be reinforced. There’s always someone out there on the internet to confirm and bolster a false narrative. Meanwhile, in this environment, it’s more difficult to counter and correct false impressions, so whatever misinformation is out there sticks harder than ever.
We lost not to the Republicans as much as to Russian psy ops. They learned it from us. We used it successfully many times since WW II. We failed to fully prosecute the 2016 election interference, and although we had advance notice did little to stop it.
Tempus fugit, but Biden can step up and be a hero. Given the threats by an inchoate unitary executive, who beleieves that his elction is redemption for being victimized and threatens recrimination, he should grant tens of thosuands of pardons to folks like us.
Are crimes of election interference acts of war? We should be discussing war powers. What about Biden as unitary executive for a month?
I don't disagree that a Russian psyop of sorts is responsible for much of our issues but I am absolutely not letting the Democratic side off the hook for not recognizing it and countering it. We can't say "look at them lying" and then head off to Rehoboth beach for a soak every weekend.
IMHO the election crimes are obvious. Before we form the circular firing squad, rule of law needs to be formost. Also you may want to interview Greg Palast.
Thanks for peeling this onion back and making us address the failures made. One thing I’ve been starting to see is a discussion on why the Democrats don’t have large “conference” groups, like CPAC, that go onto college campuses and into random ass towns, to spread awareness and messaging around and for the Democratic platform?
Seems there were a lot of assumptions made about voter demographics this cycle, and they were pretty off in places. The Dems seem to have abandoned the youth and minorities as guaranteed votes, without doing any work to create a pro-democracy civics machine.
Yes, in a nutshell, while everything Fred has to say about mainstream media is correct, the bigger problem is that most of America no longer reads or sees the MSM - all they see is the lies and distortions from Fox, Sinclair, Rogan and of course the assorted on-line garbage from Russia, Musk, “influencers” etc.
That, and of course the massive conservative billionaire investment in taking over the judiciary over the past 40 years is why we now have this disaster on our hands
Oh we are coming to that next. Over a fifth of Americans don’t use media at all and get their news from “media influencers” according to Pew. I’ve got thoughts on that too.
This “media influencer” space seems to be the most corrupted and influenced by foreign traditional, and crypto, investments. This is causing a huge disparity in funding and a huge gap in the intentions. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on where we can go.
One wonders how a strategic effort to correct the extreme bias in right wing media outlets will help deaden the hysterical rhetoric from places like FOX?
I don't know if we have to. We have to fill the vacuum. It takes time and work and it takes going everywhere. Too many Democratic candidates and their staff feel like doing podcasts, YouTube shows, and radio are "beneath them" and it shows. We didn't show up in those places and others did.
Being more attractive to a wider audience certainly works in favor. Being entirely unable to reach the unreachable FOX audience will never work unless you tame FOX content and give them reason to leave extremist outlets.
It's also the incestuous relationship between Democratic strategists, Democratic ad creators, Democratic donors, and cable news.
This bubble is absurdly insular and tone-deaf.
Democratic candidates often avoid alternative outlets, in part because they can't control the narrative.
Media culpability cannot be exaggerated. It's time-consuming to parse and contextualize pieces of legislation. So much easier (and more lucrative) to repeat Trump's ludicrous claims. Opinion panels are a poor substitute for journalism.
One comment I've heard (& agree with) is that conservatives have gobbled up the am radio stations. My ex drove a truck & was in a rig all day long listening to that crap. It's time for Democrats to jump on board & revive our presence there. We can't expect people to open their minds to new possibilities if they only hear 1 viewpoint 24/7/365.
Fred, I subscribe to David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. He wrote today about this very subject. I’ve done a cut and paste so I hope it all comes through here, and sorry David C. There was no other way to share.
Our Land
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN
A Bad Formula for Democracy: Voter Ignorance and Media Fragmentation
By David Corn November 26, 2024
Donald Trump supporters jeer at news reporters at a rally for Trump in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 2024. Francis Chung/Politico/AP
Donald Trump supporters jeer at news reporters at a rally for Trump in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 29, 2024. Francis Chung/Politico/AP
Three weeks before the election, Ipsos released polling data that was rather disturbing. The research and consulting firm presented a stark and unsurprising conclusion: “We live in two Americas.” It noted that the information ecosystem had much to do with this divide:
Partisanship has created a deep divide among Americans on politics and beyond. However, beneath partisanship, media source is also significantly correlated with Americans’ views.
Americans’ primary news source plays into what they believe to be true, their own daily personal economic situation, and ultimately, how they view former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
This was an obvious observation. The two sides in the tribalistic face-off of American politics have vastly different sources of news and information. But the data Ipsos presented revealed a much sharper split: One side is more ignorant than the other. Fox News and conservative media consumers, it stated, are “less likely to answer questions about inflation, immigration and crime correctly.” Of the Fox and conservative media crowd, only about 12 percent said it was true that inflation had declined in the past year and was near the historic average. About two-thirds of respondents who primarily received their news from national newspapers and other cable news outlets got this right. Ditto on crime. Only 10 percent of the Fox folks knew that violent crimes rates were not at or near all-time highs in most major American cities, and most believed that crime rates were soaring. Sixty-five percent of newspaper readers and other cable news consumers held an accurate view. As for social media, the poll showed that Americans who mainly got their news in this cosmos were also quite misinformed.
All this, naturally, influenced the choice of candidates for voters. Ipsos reported that “Americans who have correct information on current political issues” were more likely to say Vice President Kamala Harris was “stronger on policy areas” than Donald Trump. Among those voters with accurate views on inflation, crime, immigration, and the stock market, Harris won overwhelming majorities. Trump was the favorite of the misinformed.
There’s been a tsunami of after-the-fact supposin’ about the election. But this poll showed that a major fault line in American politics is ignorance. Amidst the yapping about how the Democrats need to revive their connection to working-class voters (meaning, white working-class voters) and debate about whether the party has gone too far to the left or has been overly tethered to centrism and neoliberalism (whatever that may be), this data indicates that a fundamental challenge for the Democrats and others is how to operate within a media ecosystem that not only is fractured but that propagates and reinforces much false information. Can an ideological shift (in either direction) matter, if so many voters lack an accurate picture of reality?
When I attended a Trump rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, the day before the election, I spoke to diehard Trump supporters and found many of them echoing his talking points: Crime was at record levels; millions of immigrants were pouring over the border every month; the economy was in worse condition than ever before. And Democrats were deliberately destroying the nation. None of this was true. When I gently asked these Trumpers if they were concerned that retired generals who had worked with Trump during his first presidency now described him as a “fascist” and a threat to democracy, at least a third said they were unaware of these statements. The others replied that these Trump detractors were being paid to say this, or they were envious of Trump, or they were his political enemies. No one accepted these remarks as good-faith criticisms of Trump. It didn’t matter what the New York Times or Washington Post reported.
Then it hit me. For these people, Trump was their media. Maybe they watched Fox or Newsmax. Or read Breitbart. Or scanned the social media posts of Elon Musk and other MAGA personalities. But they saw Trump as the paramount source of information. What he said was what was true—and certainly more accurate than the “fake news” of the New York Times, CNN, or NBC News. In Trump they trust. Not merely as a politician but as the supplier of news and information, as their guide to the world. If he said millions of criminal migrants were flooding across the border, you can believe it. If he said the economy was worse now than it ever had been, bank on that. Let’s call this what it is: a bubble. And there’s no way for mainstream news outlets to penetrate it.
How to reach voters has always been a fundamental question of politics. Not too long ago, the answer was simple: TV ads. A lot of people watched a lot of television, and there were only a few channels. You could reach people where they lived—in the living room in front of a television set. With the rise of social media and the fragmentation of media, it’s tougher for campaigns to target voters. This year, the Trump campaign, as many have noted, devoted much attention to the audience of aggrieved men—what has become known as “the manosphere”—through podcasters like Joe Rogan and social media.
As more voters obtain their information from sources outside the news media, they’re more likely to be recipients of inaccurate or skewed news. This is not to say that the traditional news outlets always are on target. But I’ll go out on the limb and say that generally journalists are going to be more mindful of facts than podcasters or social media influencers who primarily are talkers and posters (and sometimes shit-posters) frequently determined to build audiences through outrage, not verified and solid information. These new-media guys and gals are not edited or fact-checked. Certainly, some are responsible and intelligent commentators, analysts, and presenters of news. But the most popular often succeed because they strike emotional chords with viewers, listeners, and scrollers.
These far-from-reliable information sources have become increasingly impactful. This month, the Pew Research Center released a report noting that one in five Americans—or about 20 percent—received their news from influencers on social media. (An influencer, Pew decided, is a person who regularly posts about current events on social media and has at least 100,000 followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, or YouTube. Yes, that makes me an influencer.) The figure for Americans under 30 was almost double: 37 percent. Almost two-thirds of news influencers are men. Twenty-seven percent identify as pro-Trump, Republican, or conservative, as opposed to 21 percent who are liberal or Democratic.
The dominance of news influencers and non-traditional news sources will likely expand in the coming years. Will this lead to a better-informed electorate? Will their presence make it easier for political candidates to counter the spread of misinformation or disinformation? The more unchecked sources of information there are, the greater the likelihood that misinformed views will spread and distort the national discourse. “We are the media,” Elon Musk, the boy-king billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter) and one of the most prominent promoters of disinformation, exclaims. If so, we’re in deep doo-doo. With the information ecosystem shifting more toward trolling than journalism, Democrats and the news media itself need to ponder how best to confront this dynamic.
It certainly sounds elitist to gripe about voter ignorance and perhaps naive to suggest that a better-informed electorate will lead to better outcomes. After all, politics often is not about facts. Voter feelings and attitudes—vibes—have always mattered in elections. But what’s noteworthy and perhaps (relatively) new these days is the interaction between media dissolution and voter misinformation. Within the fragmented media landscape, misinformation (and disinformation) can easily be reinforced. There’s always someone out there on the internet to confirm and bolster a false narrative. Meanwhile, in this environment, it’s more difficult to counter and correct false impressions, so whatever misinformation is out there sticks harder than ever.
We lost not to the Republicans as much as to Russian psy ops. They learned it from us. We used it successfully many times since WW II. We failed to fully prosecute the 2016 election interference, and although we had advance notice did little to stop it.
Tempus fugit, but Biden can step up and be a hero. Given the threats by an inchoate unitary executive, who beleieves that his elction is redemption for being victimized and threatens recrimination, he should grant tens of thosuands of pardons to folks like us.
Are crimes of election interference acts of war? We should be discussing war powers. What about Biden as unitary executive for a month?
I don't disagree that a Russian psyop of sorts is responsible for much of our issues but I am absolutely not letting the Democratic side off the hook for not recognizing it and countering it. We can't say "look at them lying" and then head off to Rehoboth beach for a soak every weekend.
IMHO the election crimes are obvious. Before we form the circular firing squad, rule of law needs to be formost. Also you may want to interview Greg Palast.
I couldn’t post it all but what you see is the gist of what he had to say.
Thanks for peeling this onion back and making us address the failures made. One thing I’ve been starting to see is a discussion on why the Democrats don’t have large “conference” groups, like CPAC, that go onto college campuses and into random ass towns, to spread awareness and messaging around and for the Democratic platform?
Seems there were a lot of assumptions made about voter demographics this cycle, and they were pretty off in places. The Dems seem to have abandoned the youth and minorities as guaranteed votes, without doing any work to create a pro-democracy civics machine.
Yes, in a nutshell, while everything Fred has to say about mainstream media is correct, the bigger problem is that most of America no longer reads or sees the MSM - all they see is the lies and distortions from Fox, Sinclair, Rogan and of course the assorted on-line garbage from Russia, Musk, “influencers” etc.
That, and of course the massive conservative billionaire investment in taking over the judiciary over the past 40 years is why we now have this disaster on our hands
Oh we are coming to that next. Over a fifth of Americans don’t use media at all and get their news from “media influencers” according to Pew. I’ve got thoughts on that too.
This “media influencer” space seems to be the most corrupted and influenced by foreign traditional, and crypto, investments. This is causing a huge disparity in funding and a huge gap in the intentions. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on where we can go.
One wonders how a strategic effort to correct the extreme bias in right wing media outlets will help deaden the hysterical rhetoric from places like FOX?
I don't know if we have to. We have to fill the vacuum. It takes time and work and it takes going everywhere. Too many Democratic candidates and their staff feel like doing podcasts, YouTube shows, and radio are "beneath them" and it shows. We didn't show up in those places and others did.
Being more attractive to a wider audience certainly works in favor. Being entirely unable to reach the unreachable FOX audience will never work unless you tame FOX content and give them reason to leave extremist outlets.
It's also the incestuous relationship between Democratic strategists, Democratic ad creators, Democratic donors, and cable news.
This bubble is absurdly insular and tone-deaf.
Democratic candidates often avoid alternative outlets, in part because they can't control the narrative.
Media culpability cannot be exaggerated. It's time-consuming to parse and contextualize pieces of legislation. So much easier (and more lucrative) to repeat Trump's ludicrous claims. Opinion panels are a poor substitute for journalism.
One comment I've heard (& agree with) is that conservatives have gobbled up the am radio stations. My ex drove a truck & was in a rig all day long listening to that crap. It's time for Democrats to jump on board & revive our presence there. We can't expect people to open their minds to new possibilities if they only hear 1 viewpoint 24/7/365.