Cable News More Polarized Today Than Ten Years Ago, Bias Accelerated After Trump Election: Study

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Cable news is more polarized today than in the last 10 years, a new study out of the University of Pennsylvania has found. This measure of polarization, researchers noted, was accelerated after the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

In the freshly-published study titled, Measuring dynamic media bias, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, networks like Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN were analyzed and rated on a bias scale using their guests as measurement. Researchers examined guests who appeared on a particular channel for more than 10 hours between January 2010 and August of 2020. The guests themselves were then rated on a bias scale based on their political contributions.

Based on this “visibility bias,” researchers determined something that shouldn’t surprise too many people who watch their fair amount of cable news. The study identifies Fox News as further to the right, while MSNBC and CNN are much more liberal. These biases, however, became extreme after the 2016 presidential election.

It is also noted in the findings that CNN moved further to the left than MSNBC over the years, based on the research measurements. The study specifically noted that Anderson Cooper 360 and CNN Tonight were to the left of MSNBC programs like The Rachel Maddow Show, based on their guests.

“While Fox News is always to the right of CNN and MSNBC, CNN and MSNBC become more in sync over time. Between 2011 and 2015, CNN was consistently to the right of MSNBC, which is no longer the case after 2015,” the study reads.

The study noted that the most bias comes out of prime time shows when controversial figures like Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow take to the airwaves and share their opinions.

Notably, the study finds a difference in bias after 2016 where networks essentially broke from one another, previously moving along the same ideological waves, albeit while catering to either a conservative or liberal audience.

“For many years, Fox News was to the right of MSNBC and CNN, but they used to track each other. When Fox moved to the right, so did MSNBC and CNN. They all flowed together. After Trump came into office, they responded to events in the news by leaning away from each other and more strongly toward their respective ideologies,” Yphtach Lelkes, an associate professor for the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and a co-author behind the media study, said. Other noted authors are Eunji Kim and Joshua McCrain.