Why People Gravitate Toward Partisan Media
In recent years, major newsrooms and news sources have suffered from plummeting public trust in their institutions. While a part of this declining trust in the media came from external sources, such as politicians vilifying the media and two elections worth of toxic politics and animosity toward the media stoked by bad actors in Washington, another, more subtle reason is cause for concern.
A new study from researchers at the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida analyzed over 6,000 articles published by both partisan and non-partisan newsrooms found that the very process of reading more objective news was more laborious. “Mainstream news organizations, as a whole, wrote at a higher reading level,” they wrote. “For example, stories from Reuters wire service were written at the level of someone who had completed a year and a half of college, on average.” However, more partisan news outlets contained “shorter sentences and less formal language than nonpartisan outlets,” and these outlets tend to editorialize their pieces, meaning the reader is told how to feel by the tone of the piece.
“We, as humans, are what we call ‘cognitive misers,'” said Jessica F. Sparks, a leader on the study. “There are people who like to use more cognitive energy, but most of us don’t. And so, when we think about it that way, when we read simplified text — especially text that frames things as us-versus-them — it’s easier to process that than [news reports that examine] the complex goings-on of Washington.”
Partisan media outlets usually do not follow the ethics of professional journalism, which creates a problem with the information they provide. This information is more easily consumed, already interpreted for the reader, and is easier to find (and usually free to access). A study conducted at Princeton University found that the longer readers spent on partisan websites, the more their distrust grew for non-partisan sources.
Journalists are being forced to rethink their place in the media landscape as a whole for a number of reasons—the information age has led to changes in the distributive ability of news items and has also opened up the door for misinformation and disinformation to spread, unregulated and unchecked, at an alarming rate. Sparks notes that partisan outlets, though under-researched and unreliable, may contain a new and valuable lesson for writers.
“If audiences are seeking content that reflects their attitudes and that rejects mainstream journalism, partisan media outlets on both sides of the political spectrum benefit from differentiating themselves both in content substance and content style,” wrote Sparks and the research team. “Sentence structure, informality, and tone might be one way to achieve that.”
Sparks also notes that journalists should not give up their commitment to the journalistic process nor compromise their ethics—only make their language more simple while committing to the complexity of what they are reporting on. These complexities are important as Americans continue to experience extreme political division. Even if the public is more drawn to emotionally affirming, partisan media, they deserve the truth, and a journalist’s commitment to the truth is unwavering.
