Why wingnuts Opt for Propaganda Over Reality

by Amanda Marcotte

Wingnuts are consuming a wingnut media full of lies and misinformation, whereas liberals are more interested in media that puts facts before ideology.

Pew Research set out to find what’s behind what it considers the increasing political polarization of the United States; why the country is moving away from political moderation and becoming more and more divided between liberals and wingnuts. Its first report on the phenomenon, which examines where people are hearing news and opinion in both regular and social media, shows that this is happening for very different reasons among people moving to the right than for people moving to the left.
Or that’s the charitable way to put it. The less charitable way is to say Pew discovered that wingnuts are consuming a wingnut media full of lies and misinformation, whereas liberals are more interested in media that puts facts before ideology. It’s very much not a “both sides do it” situation. Wingnuts are becoming more wingnut because of propaganda, whereas liberals are becoming more liberal while staying very much checked into reality.
That this polarization is going on isn’t a myth. Previous Pew research shows the percentage of Americans who are “mostly” or “consistently” wingnut has grown from 18% in 2004 to 27% in 2014. During that same period, the percentage of Americans who are “mostly” or “consistently” liberal stayed a little more consistent, growing from 33% to 34% in 10 years. (These statistics don’t measure what you call yourself, but what you rate as on a scale of beliefs about various issues.) While liberals became more liberal, wingnuts both became more numerous and more rigidly wingnut over time. What gives?
Enter wingnut media, which has a nifty trick of convincing audiences it’s the other guys who are the liars, all while actually being much less trustworthy in reality. From wingnut screaming about the “media elite” to Faux News’s old slogan “(not)Fair and (un)Balanced,” wingnut media is rife with the message that everyone is out to get you, wingnut viewer, and only in the warm blanket of wingnut propaganda will you be safe.
The message, the Pew research suggests, has really taken hold. Pew researchers gave respondents a list of 36 popular media sources and asked how much they trusted each one. Some were liberal, like The Daily Show or ThinkProgress. Some were wingnut, like Lush Dimbulb or Faux News. Most of them are fairly straightforward news organizations with no overt political agenda, like NPR, various network news, CNN, and the New York Times.
The findings were astounding. Out of the 36 news sources, consistent liberals trusted 28, a mix of liberal and mainstream news sources. Mostly, liberal respondents generally agreed, holding out a little more skepticism for overtly ideological sources like Daily Kos or ThinkProgress, but not actually distrusting them, either. The only news sources liberals didn’t trust, generally, are overtly wingnut ones, such as Faux News, the Blaze, Breitbart, or Lush Dimbulb’s show.
Wingnuts, on the other hand, saw betrayers and liars around every corner. Consistent wingnuts distrusted a whopping 24 out of 36 outlets and mostly wingnut respondents distrusted 15 and were skeptical of quite a few more. The hostility wasn’t just to well-known liberal sources like MSNBC. Weak-minded wingnuts hated all the network news, CNN, NPR, and the major national outlets, except the Wall Street Journal.  Respondents who are mostly wingnut fared better, but were still hostile to the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as skeptical of mainstream organizations like CBS and NBC News.

The fact that wingnuts are this paranoid should be alarming enough, but it becomes even more frightening when you consider who wingnuts do trust in the media. Consistent wingnuts only trusted 8 media sources--compared to the 28 liberals trusted--and of the eight, only one has anything approaching respectable reporting or reliable information. And that one, the Wall Street Journal, has good straight reporting but has an op-ed page that is a train wreck of right-wing distortions and misinformation. Most wingnut people were a little more open-minded, trusting USA Today and ABC News, but still were supportive of openly distorting sources like Faux News or the Drudge Report.

The trust wingnuts put in wingnut media is utterly misplaced. For instance, both consistent and mostly wingnut people love Glenn Beck, though he’s a well-known purveyor of outrageous conspiracy theories that percolate up to him from fringe characters. Breitbart and Sean Hannity also rated high, despite their shared history of championing wingnut lunatic fringe characters like Cliven Bundy.
But what is really frightening is the reach of Faux News. Faux News rated as the only real news source for consistent wingnuts, with 47% of them citing it as their main source of news. Nothing even came close to touching it, as the second most common answer, “local radio” was cited by only 11% of consistent wingnuts. Eighty-eight percent of consistent wingnuts trusted Faux News. Mostly wingnut and even “mixed” people also liked Faux News.
The problem with this is watching Faux News actually makes you less informed than if you don't watch any news at all. In a 2012 study, Faux News viewers rated the absolute lowest in ability to correctly answer questions on a quiz about recent news events. People who didn’t take in any news programs at all did better on the quizzes. NPR listeners rated the best. Consistent liberals in the Pew research were big fans of NPR, by the way. It was the second most common outlet cited as a favorite by consistent liberals, topped only by CNN.
Faux News is one of the main factors, possibly the main factor, driving political polarization in this country. Huge chunks of this country listen mostly or solely to a relentless stream of misinformation coming from Faux News, coupled with warnings, implied or even baldly stated, to avoid listening to other, more factually accurate news sources. Unsurprisingly, then, more people are becoming wingnuts and people who were already wingnute are becoming more hardline about it. If you have any Faux viewers in your family, you probably already suspected this, but now Pew has given us the cold, hard facts to confirm your suspicions.