we find asymmetries in individuals’ willingness to venture into cross-cutting spaces, with conservatives more likely to follow media and political accounts classified as left-leaning than the reverse.
i get why someone might pull a MAGA hat off someone
hell, i might even do it at some point
Partisan outlets in the conservative media ecosystem are simply not a mirror image of the mainstream news outlets that they often position themselves against. Opinion plays an outsize role in this ecosystem, while it is only a part of what mainstream news organizations produce. By the same token, professional journalistic norms are not as widely established in partisan conservative media, so that conservatives with a taste for both traditionally reported news and congenial opinion may need to sample more widely than liberals with analogous tastes.
@HamburgerBoy and @Einherjar86 I absolutely understand your counterpoint. I disagree however with the degree to which you assign "mainstream" to "leftist" outlets because leftists are the ones assigning "mainstream" status in a non-pejorative sense! If, instead of "mainstream", we use "neutral", this clearly shifts CNN, MSNBC, NYT, NPR, WaPo etc into the leftist category. Neutral consists of AP and Reuters for the most part, and maybe a couple more you could argue, but not those "mainstream" options. If we use simple popularity, this makes FOX outlets, at a minimum, "mainstream".
I'm not sure if HBB would agree with this, but I think there's a marked difference between CNN and NYT, and FOX News. CNN interviews John McWhorter. FOX interviews Ted Nugent.
Part of the distinction here has to do, again, with journalistic standards.
Couple of issues with this. One, you're picking extremes, and if I want to find a Nugent-level celebrity on one of those liberal outlets, it won't be hard to do. Two, "journalistic standards" don't reduce the viewpoint bias. How many Covington, Michael Brown, and Trump examples do I need to pull as problematic for those liberal outlets (with support from McWhorter, not counting the Trump issues, which can easily be mocked with the "turning point/bombshell/etc clips")?
CNN interviews John McWhorter. FOX interviews Ted Nugent.