How Americans perceive the coronavirus outbreak and view media coverage differ by their main news source, new research from Pew Research Center‘s Journalism & Media arm finds.
That said, the study looks at the nation’s three nationally distributed pay TV “news” networks, which until early March were largely focused on Washington politics and opinions.
According to a survey conducted March 10-16 as a part of Pew Research Center’s Election News Pathways project, responses to coronavirus pandemic coverage and the crisis itself vary notably among Americans who identify Fox News, MSNBC or CNN as their main source of political news.
In particular, the responses to COVID-19 news from those whose main source for political news is MSNBC or Fox News are strikingly different.
It suggests that Americans are bipolar on all news — not just that involving Democrats and Republicans.
The group who names MSNBC as their main news source is far more likely than the Fox News group to answer correctly that the coronavirus originated in nature rather than a laboratory and that it will take a year or more for a vaccine to become available.
This analysis comes from a survey of 8,914 U.S. adults who are members of the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.
The Fox News and MSNBC groups also differ in their evaluations of the media’s coverage of the pandemic. Those who call MSNBC their main political news source are far more likely to say the media covered the outbreak somewhat or very well (92%) than the Fox News group (58%). And they are much less likely than those who name Fox News as their main source to say the media exaggerated the risks posed by the pandemic (35% of the MSNBC group vs. 79% of the Fox News group).
One area where there was a general consensus among those who rely most on all three cable news networks is whether they have seen news about the pandemic that seemed made up. Here, 53% of the Fox News group say they had seen a lot or some made-up news, only modestly higher than the 46% of those who turn primarily to CNN and MSNBC who say the same.
