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Loss of Newspapers Contributes to Political Polarization
January 30, 2019 at 5:42 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 29 Comments
https://politicalwire.com/2019/01/30/loss-of-newspapers-contributes-to-political-polarization/
"SNIP....
A new study found that the steady loss of local newspapers and journalists across the country contributes to the nations political polarization, the AP reports.
With fewer opportunities to find out about local politicians, citizens are more likely to turn to national sources like cable news and apply their feelings about national politics to people running for the town council or state legislature.
The result is much less split ticket voting, or people whose ballot includes votes for people of different parties. In 1992, 37 percent of states with Senate races elected a senator from a different party than the presidential candidate the state supported. In 2016, for the first time in a century, no state did that, the study found.
Said professor Johanna Dunaway: The voting behavior was more polarized, less likely to include split ticket voting, if a newspaper had died in the community.
....SNIP"
2naSalit
(86,646 posts)brooklynite
(94,596 posts)GO back 100 years or so, and you'll find that newspapers encouraged political polarization by taking a specific political bent:
Plattsburgh Press-REPUBLICAN
Arkansas DEMOCRAT-Gazette
applegrove
(118,683 posts)Newspapers stopped writing as salaciously as they had in the 1920s. People had had enough of liars and monstrous instigations after Hitler. Everyone wanted to be Woodward, Bernstein or Bradlee. And then fox happened. And the internet. The internet is good and bad. Look at how dictators or autocrats are targeting journalists. That is because there are no borders on information. And that is good for people needing good information they might not otherwise get. It is a leveler. People in the west need to get wise. But it is hard to learn when the effects of being gullible are veiled by politicians.