A massive partisan split has opened among Americans on the role of the news media since the election of President Donald Trump, a new poll showed Wednesday.
In the Pew Research Center poll, nearly nine in 10 Democrats (89 percent) said the media serves as a check against political leaders while just 42 percent of Republicans agreed with that statement.
The findings are in sharp contrast with a survey in early 2016 when nearly the same share of Democrats (74 percent) and Republicans (77 percent) supported the “watchdog” role of the press, Pew said.
The gap was the widest in more than three decades of polling by Pew Research Center on the question, and comes amid tense relations between the news media and Trump, who has labeled the press as “the enemy of the people.”
“While Republicans have been more likely to support a watchdog role during Democratic presidencies and vice versa, the distance between the parties has never approached the 47-point gap that exists today,” the Pew report said.
Until now, the widest gap occurred during the George W. Bush administration, when Democrats were 28 percentage points more likely than Republicans to support a watchdog role.
Overall, the findings show low levels of trust in the press, but with Republicans far more circumspect about the mainstream media.
In the poll of more than 4,000 adults in March, 87 percent of Republicans said news organizations “tend to favor one side” in reporting, up from 84 percent a year ago. But among Democrats, 53 percent agreed with that statement, compared with 64 percent in 2016.
One in three Democrats said information from national news outlets was “very trustworthy,” a rise of seven percentage points from last year.
But among Republicans, only 11 percent said they trusted these news outlets, compared with 15 percent a year earlier.
The gap also widened when respondents were asked whether the national media keeps them “well informed” — 33 percent of Democrats said they agreed, compared with 18 percent of Republicans. A year earlier the gap was only four percentage points.
The survey found Americans are also paying closer attention to national news now than in 2016, with the increase driven by Democrats.
Overall, 40 percent of Americans report following national news very closely, up from a third the year before. Among Democrats, the figure was 49 percent, compared with 33 percent in 2016.
Pew found that 45 percent of US adults are frequently getting news on a mobile device, nine percentage points higher than last year.
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