The polarized world in which we live
by digby
Huffington Post took an interesting snapshot of one interesting day of the news cycle last week:
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of federal charges, and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to charges in a separate federal case. The week was one of the worst of Trump’s presidency, with questions about how much he was involved in illegal campaign finance schemes.
Here’s how some journalists described the news: “almost surreal,” “all-consuming” and “even by the dizzying standards of the Trump-fueled news cycle … the most frenetic yet.”
And here’s how a 50-year-old California man saw it who said he spent a little under half an hour reading the paper and checking Facebook and Twitter: “Nothing special. Just a ho-hum day.”
Most Americans pay at least a little attention to current events, but they differ enormously in where they turn to get their news and which stories they pay attention to. To get a better sense of how a busy news cycle played out in homes across the country, we repeated an experiment, teaming up with YouGov to ask 1,000 people nationwide to describe their news consumption and respond to a simple prompt: “In your own words, please describe what you would say happened in the news on Tuesday.”
Some were raptly following the latest political developments. One person likened it to “binge-watching a fictional series on Netflix.” But only a quarter of those surveyed said they had paid a lot of attention to the news, and just 27 percent said Tuesday’s news cycle seemed much busier than usual. Many said, sometimes apologetically, that they had been dealing with more pressing demands. Some were busy with work or were dealing with medical issues. One woman was preoccupied battling an eviction from her home; another, after reading the morning paper, spent most of her day helping at a church food bank. A man in New York was camping and couldn’t get a TV signal.
Others were burned out, overwhelmed or uninterested or just didn’t trust the media. “I do not have a big understanding of politics,” another respondent wrote, “and there is so [much] bickering that sometimes I just turn the news off.”
But for many, the Manafort and Cohen stories still broke through. Of those polled who said they had paid any attention to the news and who were able to name at least one news story that happened on Tuesday, nearly three-quarters mentioned the guilty outcomes, making them by far the most-cited news stories.
But Americans’ interpretations of the stories varied widely, as did their levels of interest.
Many of Trump’s opponents were ecstatic (“I love this ‘witch hunt’ so much!” one said), but many of his supporters circled the wagons (“Liberal media glee at the news about Manafort and Cohen, even though Manafort had nothing to do with Trump and Cohen only slightly involved Trump,” one responded). Whereas some rattled off detailed summaries of the proceedings, others’ recollection was limited to, as one put it, “Someone important got convicted.”
And the Manafort and Cohen cases weren’t the only stories to attract attention. About 20 percent of those polled who were able to name at least one news story said they had followed other political topics, including Trump’s rally in West Virginia, the indictment of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and reports on the strength of the economy. Just over a quarter mentioned the killing of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts, which the Trump administration seized on to push for stricter controls on immigration. Other stories to garner interest included a hurricane bearing down on Hawaii, an earthquake striking Venezuela, the killing of Shanann Watts, the toppling of a Confederate statue in North Carolina and the emergency landing of a plane carrying rapper Post Malone.
More telling than those statistics are respondents’ own words. You can read a sampling of the responses from across the political spectrum below.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of federal charges, and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to charges in a separate federal case. The week was one of the worst of Trump’s presidency, with questions about how much he was involved in illegal campaign finance schemes.
Here’s how some journalists described the news: “almost surreal,” “all-consuming” and “even by the dizzying standards of the Trump-fueled news cycle … the most frenetic yet.”
And here’s how a 50-year-old California man saw it who said he spent a little under half an hour reading the paper and checking Facebook and Twitter: “Nothing special. Just a ho-hum day.”
Most Americans pay at least a little attention to current events, but they differ enormously in where they turn to get their news and which stories they pay attention to. To get a better sense of how a busy news cycle played out in homes across the country, we repeated an experiment, teaming up with YouGov to ask 1,000 people nationwide to describe their news consumption and respond to a simple prompt: “In your own words, please describe what you would say happened in the news on Tuesday.”
Some were raptly following the latest political developments. One person likened it to “binge-watching a fictional series on Netflix.” But only a quarter of those surveyed said they had paid a lot of attention to the news, and just 27 percent said Tuesday’s news cycle seemed much busier than usual. Many said, sometimes apologetically, that they had been dealing with more pressing demands. Some were busy with work or were dealing with medical issues. One woman was preoccupied battling an eviction from her home; another, after reading the morning paper, spent most of her day helping at a church food bank. A man in New York was camping and couldn’t get a TV signal.
Others were burned out, overwhelmed or uninterested or just didn’t trust the media. “I do not have a big understanding of politics,” another respondent wrote, “and there is so [much] bickering that sometimes I just turn the news off.”
But for many, the Manafort and Cohen stories still broke through. Of those polled who said they had paid any attention to the news and who were able to name at least one news story that happened on Tuesday, nearly three-quarters mentioned the guilty outcomes, making them by far the most-cited news stories.
But Americans’ interpretations of the stories varied widely, as did their levels of interest.
Many of Trump’s opponents were ecstatic (“I love this ‘witch hunt’ so much!” one said), but many of his supporters circled the wagons (“Liberal media glee at the news about Manafort and Cohen, even though Manafort had nothing to do with Trump and Cohen only slightly involved Trump,” one responded). Whereas some rattled off detailed summaries of the proceedings, others’ recollection was limited to, as one put it, “Someone important got convicted.”
And the Manafort and Cohen cases weren’t the only stories to attract attention. About 20 percent of those polled who were able to name at least one news story said they had followed other political topics, including Trump’s rally in West Virginia, the indictment of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and reports on the strength of the economy. Just over a quarter mentioned the killing of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts, which the Trump administration seized on to push for stricter controls on immigration. Other stories to garner interest included a hurricane bearing down on Hawaii, an earthquake striking Venezuela, the killing of Shanann Watts, the toppling of a Confederate statue in North Carolina and the emergency landing of a plane carrying rapper Post Malone.
More telling than those statistics are respondents’ own words. You can read a sampling of the responses from across the political spectrum below.
Sigh …
.