Benjamin Toff, director of the Minnesota Journalism Center at the Hubbard School, helped draft the poll questions. The findings “suggest that how people feel (about) events is very much shaped by where they’re getting their news and information,” he said.
Analyzing the poll answers, Toff found that 80% of newspaper readers oppose deporting undocumented immigrants without a court hearing, while 47% of television viewers feel the same way.
Social media, at 16%, was the second-most popular method for finding news among poll respondents.
Like Semmelroth, information security consultant John Bauer, 50, of Columbia Heights, said he’s grown weary of the news. “After Trump got elected again, I kind of detached,” he said, saying there’s more division and chaos now. Reading the news used to be a frequent habit, he said; he set up his Apple News app to deliver items from left, right and center-held views. Now he reads a story only if he’s intrigued by the headline.
Bauer said he feels manipulated by the news more than ever, and he worries about what’s being left out of news stories.
“When facts are left out, that’s just as misleading or propaganda-ish as straight-out lying,” he said.
