Survey: Brands Impacted By Growing Political Polarization

The gap between how Republicans and Democrats view national media brands such as CNN and Fox News continues to widen, solidifying the country’s partisan echo chambers as the next presidential cycle nears.

News outlets make up 12 of the 15 most politically polarizing brands, out of the more than 3,700 brands that Morning Consult tracks daily, according to July 1-Aug. 8 polling that gauged an average of 13,419 survey respondents per brand.

This year’s findings are similar to 2018 data, but the political polarization has grown by double digits for some brands. Morning Consult determined the rankings by measuring the differences in net favorability — the share of U.S. adults with a favorable view of each brand minus those with an unfavorable view — among self-identified Democrats and Republicans.

“It is fair to say that the media reacted to Trump’s election with alarm — and changed the tenor of its coverage in a way that that made the Democrats think the media is more important and made Republicans think it was more biased,” said Matt Grossman, an associate political science professor at the Michigan State University.

The difference between Republicans’ and Democrats’ net favorability for CNN, for example, stood at 66 percentage points last year. It grew 14 points to 80 this year, due to a 12-point drop in net favorability among Republicans, from minus 13 to minus 25. Republicans held more negative views than Democrats of every media outlet on the list except for Fox News.

And for the major media outlets that have embraced a more adversarial stance on Trump since his election, business has been good.

Viewership for all three leading cable networks — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — increased in 2018, per a Pew Research Center analysis of Comscore data.

For the three, total revenue and total profit both increased by 4 percent in 2018. The uptick in revenue was part of a 36 percent surge since 2015, from $3.87 billion to $5.26 billion. Profit, at $2.85 billion, was up 50 percent since 2015’s $1.9 billion.

The New York Times, the fourth most divisive brand on the list and a habitual punching bag for Trump, posted record print and digital subscriptions.