Sunday afternoon, Politico came out with a “special report” on the relationship between the strength of local newspapers and support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. “Trump thrives in areas that lack traditional news outlets,” the headline said. … I have a lot of sympathy for those who argue […] Read more »
How Trump thrives in ‘news deserts’
President Donald Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media may be rooted in statistical reality: An extensive review of subscription data and election results shows that Trump outperformed the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in counties with the lowest numbers of news subscribers, but didn’t do nearly as well in areas […] Read more »
President Trump, Twitter and the News Media
If President Trump wants to keep a Republican Congress after 2018, he needs to tweet less about people who offend him (the media, Jeff Bezos, Mueller, etc.) and focus more on the economy and things that help everyday Americans. Frank Luntz .@FrankLuntz: “It’s [@POTUS‘s] own tweets that are causing so […] Read more »
Authoritarian Warning Survey: Increased threat levels and perceived risk of democratic breakdown
Our expert survey results in March 2018 demonstrate increased threat levels and perceived risk of democratic breakdown. From February to March 2018, ratings worsened on all six dimensions of democratic performance, further reversing the improvement from December to January. Experts rate a 9.1% chance of democratic breakdown in the U.S. […] Read more »
A new study suggests fake news might have won Donald Trump the 2016 election
President Trump has said repeatedly that Russian interference didn’t matter in the 2016 presidential campaign, and he has suggested — wrongly — that the intelligence and law enforcement communities have said the same. His overriding fear seems to be that Russian interference and the “fake news” it promoted would undermine […] Read more »
‘Fake News’ Threat to Media; Editorial Decisions, Outside Actors at Fault
The news about “fake news” is not good, according to the Monmouth University Poll. Large majorities of the American public believe that traditional media outlets engage in reporting fake news and that outside sources are actively trying to plant fake stories in the mainstream media. When it comes to the […] Read more »