Media: You Love Your Own and Hate The Other

Absurd and punny headlines aside, media is something all of us use. I use my local news channels and occasionally the New York Times (when I have my free articles). Many people are passionate about what types of media they use. I'm not a diehard for the sources and sites I use but there are many people who are.

Let's just jump into it.

The graph above is about the opinions of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans regarding the entirety of the media and the media they personally use. As we can see on the graph, Republicans and Independents are generally much more negative about the entire "news media" compared to Democrats since the numbers under Democrats are at least 10% higher than those for Republicans and Independents (on the left side of the chart). Another trend found in the data is that more people are biased towards the media they use because compared to the numbers regarding "news media", the numbers for "news media you use most often" are at least 5% higher across all the boards. These patterns are related because the sources Democrats use most often tend to make up the majority of the "mass media", hence why Democrats are in favor of the "mass media" more than the Democrats' counterparts.
A possible explanation for this pattern is political polarization. Due to the introduction of internet algorithms, people who view conservative news sources are suggested more conservative news sources and people who view liberal news sources are suggested more liberal news sources. Because people do not access media they have ideological differences with, they are more susceptible to only hearing the viewpoint they agree with and feel as if other sources may be misleading because they have different perspectives or opinions.
A weird point of data that needs to be talked about is the 8% of Republicans who think the mass media are willing to admit their mistakes. This is the lowest percentage compared to all other points of data and the only point of data below 10%.