Republicans Say News Media Don’t Understand

by Jeffrey Gottfried & Elizabeth Grieco

A majority of Americans believe the news media do not understand people like them, and this feeling is especially common among Republicans, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

Overall, 58% of U.S. adults feel the news media do not understand people like them, while 40% feel they are understood, as reported in a recent Pew Research Center study.

Republicans, however, are nearly three times as likely to feel that news organizations don’t understand them (73%) as they are to say they feel understood (25%). By comparison, most Democrats (58%) say they feel understood by the news media, while four-in-ten say they do not.

Not only are Republicans far more likely to feel misunderstood by the news media, they feel this way regardless of their media habits and demographic characteristics, according to the analysis of data collected Feb. 22 to March 4, 2018, among 5,035 U.S. adults.

About three-quarters of Republicans who are very interested in the news (74%) say news organizations do not understand people like them – about the same share as among those who are somewhat interested (70%) and not interested in the news (78%).

Among Democrats, however, news interest plays a large role in whether they feel misunderstood. About a quarter of Democrats who are very interested in the news feel misunderstood (27%), compared with about four-in-ten of the somewhat interested (39%) and roughly half of those not interested (52%). Still, Democrats at all levels of news interest are much less likely than Republicans to feel misunderstood by the news media.

Republicans differ little across various demographic groups in saying people like them are misunderstood by the media. For example, Republicans have high levels of feeling misunderstood across sex, age and education groups (between 70% and 76% in each group say they feel misunderstood).