Deep political divides in many nations on satisfaction with news media; greatest is in the U.S.

AMY MITCHELL, KATIE SIMMONS, KATERINA EVA MATSA AND LAURA SILVER

Publics around the world overwhelmingly agree that the news media should be unbiased in their coverage of political issues, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 38 countries. Yet, when asked how their news media are doing on reporting different political issues fairly, people are far more mixed in their sentiments, with many saying their media do not deliver. And, in many countries, there are sharp political differences in views of the media - with the largest gap among Americans.

To build off Pew Research Center’s earlier findings about U.S.news media habits and attitudes, this new cross-national survey begins to study these dynamics globally. The survey finds that a median of 75% across 38 countries say it is never acceptable for a news organization to favor one political party over others when reporting the news. Just 20% say this is sometimes okay.People in Europe show the greatest opposition to political bias in their news, including 89% in Spain and 88% in Greece who think this is unacceptable. In the United States, 78% say the news media should never favor one political party over another.In only five countries do at least three-in-ten believe it is okay to favor one side.

While publics around the globe place a premium on politically unbiased news media, this is precisely the performance area,among four asked about, where publics are least likely to say their news media are doing well. A median of only 52% across the 38 nations polled say the news media in their country do a good job of reporting on political issues fairly, while 44% say they do not. And although majorities of the public in 18 countries say their news media are performing well in this area, attitudes are more negative in the remaining 20 nations surveyed. The most critical are Spain, Greece, South Korea, Lebanon and Chile,where at least six-in-ten say their news media do not do well on reporting the news fairly.

News media receive considerably higher marks in other performance areas. Broad majorities say their news media do a good job of covering the most important stories (median of 73%), reporting the news accurately (62%), and reporting news about government leaders and officials (59%). People in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific are more satisfied with their news media, while Latin Americans are the most critical. The U.S. public tends to fall roughly in the middle across the different performance areas asked about.

News media rated highest for covering important issues, lowest for reporting on politics fairly

Political party systems vary considerably across countries,but one consistent measure for comparing political divides is support for the governing party or parties. Individuals who identify with the governing party or parties are categorized as supporters, everyone else as nonsupporters. In the U.S., this means that people who identify with the Republican Party,which currently controls all branches of the federal government,are considered governing party supporters. People who identify with the Democratic Party, say they are independent, identify with some other party or do not identify with any political party are categorized as nonsupporters. (For more details on the categorization, please see Appendix B.)

The partisan gaps found in the survey indicate that, rather than being consistently tied to a particular ideological position,satisfaction with the news media across the globe is more closely related to support for the party in power - whether that party is left or right. Public satisfaction with the news media also links closely to trust in one’s national government and a sense that the economy is doing well, which reinforces the point that,for most countries surveyed here, satisfaction with the media aligns with satisfaction on other country conditions rather than along a left-right spectrum.

These are among the major findings of a Pew Research Center survey conducted among 41,953 respondents in 38 countries from Feb. 16 to May 8, 2017. In addition to the topics discussed above,the study also focuses on individuals’ use of the internet and social media to get news, as well as the types of news people follow.