Report: Media Bubbles Are Real, Biased

A new report is shedding light on so-called "media bubbles" and how the mainstream networks and newspapers got last year's presidential election so wrong.

Data crunchers at POLITICO found it’s where the majority of journalists now work which has greatly impacted how news is reported.  Call it a “groupthink” caused by the continued downsizing of local newspapers across the nation.

Tucker Doherty, a data reporter at POLITICO PRO, says many journalists have been forced to move to the East and West coasts to find work in broadcasting or online publications.  These are Democratic strongholds who supported Hillary Clinton.

“When you have all of these jobs in this handful of atypical cities, it leads to newsrooms with people who have a lot of the same opinions, a lot of the same backgrounds that have led to some blindspots that have become obvious in the past year,” says Doherty.

“As newspapers closed or shrunk across the country and Internet jobs kept booming, the industry at a whole became much more tightly clustered in these handful of cities.”

Because news outlets are constantly competing for a larger audience, they're focusing more on national issues than ever before.

“Its about job markets, its about advertising changes and not really something that was done intentionally, but makes it harder to intentionally undo it,” says Doherty.

Having said that, Doherty doesn't think much will change in terms of how news is reported before the next election.

“I don't think its realistic to predict that in five years CNN, New York Times or even POLITICO is going to pay to have a thousand little news bureaus in all of the towns and small cities of America, its probably not going to happen,” he says.


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