There are certain kinds of news stories that are really just iterations of an Ur-text, the defining statement about human existence that underlines a million variant tales. For instance, how many environmental stories do you read that are versions of Human activity is warming the earth’s atmosphere and damaging countless natural processes? Or how many political stories that all come down to Donald Trump lacks the standard human shame that limits how much people lie in public and obvious ways? There’s more news breaking every day — but at its core, it’s all just variations on a theme.
In the Nieman Lab universe, one of the core Ur-texts — alongside You’re probably going to need a paywall to survive, Information inequality is increasing, and There aren’t enough philanthropists to pay for all of local news — is Perceptions of the news media in the United States are radically and increasingly polarized by ideology. We’ve written about a gazillion studies, reports, and papers that reach a version of that conclusion. And here’s another one, with an international twist.
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