Do Presidential Attacks on the News Media Inspire Citizens to Follow Suit?

• In Event: Attitudes Towards News

Abstract

Public trust in the national news media has declined in recent years, especially as attacks from prominent figures have increased. These attacks, such as the video President Trump posted of him wrestling a CNN avatar, mostly target national news media, and have prompted news organizations to object that such attacks may further erode public confidence in journalism. But it is unclear whether attacks from prominent political figures have inspired increased animosity toward the news media - and the extent to which that animosity extends beyond national outlets to more local ones. A long line of literature has shown that presidents use the bully pulpit to draw attention to favored issues among members of the public or to rally the public to put pressure on other political actors (e.g. Tulis, 1987; Neustadt, 1990; Kernell, 2007). Traditionally, this communication has been through the media, but President Trump’s regular accusations of “fake news” and other attacks on the news media on social media allow him to go around the news media and influence public opinion through these platforms, where the evidence of any effects can be directly shown. Using a dataset of tweets either containing the phrase “fake news” or mentioning one of a dozen national and local news organizations, we test whether Trump’s attacks have immediate effect within the medium. We find that the volume of tweets accusing news organizations of spreading fake news doubles in the days following Trump’s attacks; mentions of prominent news organizations also increased at double digit rates, even when they were not directly mentioned in Trump’s tweets. The number of tweets mentioning regional news organizations increased as well, but usually at lower rates. The rhetoric in these tweets was also more negative in the days following Trump’s statements. This suggests that, even though the rhetoric of fake news has permeated mainstream discourse about the news media, Trump is able to activate sympathetic members of the public who then can, at least within the same platform, propagate his attacks on the media. Additionally, people attacking media outlets on Twitter seem to not differentiate between media outlets, with multiple types of outlets drawing fire.

Authors

• Galen Stocking, Pew Research Center

• Michael Barthel, Pew Research Center