From suing outlets to banning The Associated Press, President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought an unprecedented flurry of attacks on the media. But news about these events doesn’t appear to be reaching many Americans, according to a Pew Research Center study released Monday.
The study, based on a survey of 5,123 adults between Feb. 24 and March 2, found that just 36% of Americans reported hearing “a lot” about the Trump administration’s relationship with the news media. Nearly a fifth said they’ve heard “nothing at all,” and 44% said they’ve heard “a little” about it.
That’s a substantial decline from Trump’s first term, when 72% of Americans said in March 2017 that they’ve heard a lot about his administration’s relationship with the media.
Senior researcher Elisa Shearer noted that before the survey opened, there were multiple headlines about Trump’s lawsuits — including ones against CBS News and The Des Moines Register — and the administration’s decision to bar the AP from Oval Office events. During the survey period, the White House took over its press pool, deciding which outlets could access Trump.
“All those things happened shortly before or during the field period,” Shearer said. “But still we see about half as many people say that they’ve heard a lot about the relationship between the Trump administration and the news media compared with 2017.”
Though national news consumption has generally been on the decline, those changes are slight and wouldn’t explain the dramatic decrease that Pew found, Shearer said.
Indeed, more Americans reported paying attention to political news now than during the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency. The Pew study found that 71% of Americans said they are following news about the actions and initiatives of the Trump administration “very” or “fairly closely,” compared to 66% for the Biden administration in 2021. Forty percent of Americans said they are paying more attention to political news since Trump’s inauguration, while 10% said they are paying less attention.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans described the relationship between the Trump administration and the press as “very” or “somewhat bad.” Just 11% described it as “very” or “somewhat good,” and 22% said it is “neutral.”
While the belief that the administration has a bad relationship with the press spans party lines, Republicans and Democrats differ greatly in their views on who is to blame. Seventy percent of Democrats said the Trump administration is “too critical of the media,” while only 23% of Republicans said the same. The plurality of Republicans, or 46%, said they believe the administration has been “mostly fair” to the media.
Similar differences emerged when respondents were asked about the media’s coverage of Trump. Just 12% of Democrats said they think the media is “too critical of the administration,” compared to 69% of Republicans. Meanwhile, 62% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans said they think the media is “not critical enough.”
Republicans and Democrats also differed in their reasons for following news about the Trump administration. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats who follow the news said they do so out of concern about the administration’s actions, compared to 45% of Republicans. In contrast, 64% of Republicans who follow the news said they do so because they like what the administration is doing, compared to 8% of Democrats. A higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats said they follow the news out of entertainment or interest.
Among those who do not follow news about the Trump administration, the most common reasons cited were news fatigue, a general avoidance of political news and a dislike for the administration’s actions. Again, responses differed by party. A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans said they have not been closely following the news because they are “worn out” by the amount of it or because they do not like what the administration is doing.
There was one major commonality: 62% of both Democrats and Republicans said a major reason they have been following news about the administration is because they find it “relevant” to their lives.
“People across the party lines and across age groups are paying attention to political news,” Shearer said. “They might be getting it in different ways. There might be a slight decline over a long period of time in how much people say they’re paying attention. But people are still tuning in.”
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