Since the invention of cable television, the American political system has been faced with a challenge that, if left ignored, could damage the very foundation of American democracy. This problem is not commonly reported on in the news because the problem lies in the news itself. Over the past several decades, landscape of popular news media has changed over time from families tuning into the evening news on one of three major channels, into a diversified variety of politically biased news sources ranging from TV broadcasts to Twitter posts. Since this shift has been occurring, the farthest-from-center news consumers have begun watching this type of news exclusively, pushing them further from the center than they already were, and most importantly, making them less likely to want to cooperate with the opposite political wing. This has forced politicians to have to appeal to a more polarized voter base, therefore making the politicians more polarized. This trend carries on from small time congressional elections where the only voters are the most polarized, to presidential elections where primaries force candidates to appeal almost exclusively to party hardliners. Even as this trend has been well documented over the years, people still think that Washington gridlock has nothing to do with the uncooperativeness of the people the politicians are trying to please. The rise of politically charged news outlets is creating a voter base in America that is unwilling to listen to opposing viewpoints which is in turn creating a more politically divided Washington, not the other way around. 

The rise of politically charged news media has been well documented in the past, as well as the long-term effects it has on the media atmosphere as a whole. There likely has not been a time in American politics where the media was as influential as it was in the recent 2016 presidential election. The way each candidate was reported on during the election was very different than a normal election because of one relatively new phenomenon. The Columbia Journalism Review refers to this phenomenon as a completely insulated, and highly consumed far-right media sphere that shifted the topics of discussion in the election almost like a gravitational pull. This isolated media sphere “not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton”(Benkler). Because so many people were tuning into this new rogue media platform, and because it was producing so many wild claims about the opposing candidate as such a high rate of speed, even the most respected of media outlets had no choice but to address the otherwise baseless claims that were being made. The study found that, “The right-wing media was also able to bring the focus on immigration, Clinton emails, and scandals more generally to the broader media environment”(Benkler). This shift in coverage has caused consumers of both conventional and far-right media to be more exposed to otherwise far-right wing talking points, which will either push right wing voters farther right or push left wing voters farther left in response. 

Politically biased media is very effective at swaying the viewpoints of its readers because it uses fundamental human cognition to its advantage. In short, people are drawn in by hearing what they want to hear and then listen to the same source until it is the only source that seems trustworthy to them. This process has been studied by many political scientists in recent years. One major psychological habit that political media appeals to is known as motivated reasoning. When people hear a keyword that they already have a pre-determined opinion on, “Border Wall”, for example, they will be more likely to immediately accept information that supports their opinion on the topic. Normally, this cognition process is overturned by the presence of a counter argument, however when a reader habitually consumes information from a source that only produces slanted information without any counter argument, they are much more likely to immediately accept the information as fact(Levendusky, 51). This trend can become significantly more dangerous because it is be very difficult sometimes for a media consumer to realize that they are only viewing slanted news sources. University of Texas professor Natalie Stroud explains, “When [the readers] are looking for information, they look rationally and say, ‘which source gives me the best quality...best information I can find’ and it just so happens that when we make those sorts of judgements they tend to be related to what we believe”(Stroud). Because readers have already formed opinions on the topics they are searching for information on, their judgements can be clouded even though they are searching for the most accurate information possible. This leads to a pattern of readers being drawn in by slanted information they assume to be the most accurate source possible, then believing everything they are told from that source automatically because it supports their pre-formed opinion. The entire process polarizes the electorate because, “subjects who used to agree or disagree with a policy will now strongly agree or strongly disagree with it”(Levendusky, 51). 

The cognitive processes that are taken advantage of by political news outlets provide a clear explanation as to how political media can affect the electorate so acutely even though 43% of Americans consider themselves to be political independents(Jones). Politically slanted media is more likely to be read or watched by people who are more politically active and people who already agree with the specific source’s opinion.  Princeton professor Markus Prior explains, “Ideologically one-sided news exposure may be largely confined to a small, but highly involved and influential, segment of the population. There is no firm evidence that partisan media are making ordinary Americans more partisan”(Prior). While political media may not be dangerous in the hands of the average American walking down the street, it is so effective because the people who consume political media are more likely to vote. This concept is augmented because not only are people who watch political media more likely to vote already, the more someone watches political media, the more politically active they are likely to become. A study was conducted in which households from Prince William County in northern Virginia were randomly given subscriptions to either a local liberal or local conservative newspaper in the months before an election. After the election, the subjects were given surveys asking whether or not they had voted. The researchers explain, “Our finding that turnout among the treatment groups was about 3 percentage points higher than the control group is consistent with previous work showing positive turnout effects from newspaper reading and suggests newspaper exposure might have an important long term effect on the level of political interest”(Gerber). Not only does political media make its consumers more likely to vote, it also makes them less likely to want to compromise on any of the subjects they have seen in the news. In the beginning of his book, Levendusky explains, “Because partisan media harshly critiques the other side and their policies, citizens might come to think the opposition does not have legitimate ideas, and may be less willing to compromise with them(Levendusky, 5). Also, political analyst David Trilling’s review of Duca’s study, he concludes, “The decreasing exposure to alternative views and the increasing buttressing of one’s own views has combined to create less sympathy for others’ views and less of an ability to understand others’ views”(Trilling). The more someone is exposed to constant criticism of one side without ever hearing a counter argument from that side, the less they are willing to accept any of the other side’s ideas in a compromise because all they ever hear is that they are completely and totally wrong. What makes the popularization of political media especially dangerous is that it is only people who are most politically active that consume it regularly, and as they take in more information, they become even more fervent about the political process and more uncompromising in their beliefs, making them even more likely to vote than someone with a neutral opinion on politics. This leads to the polls lined up with people who will only vote for candidates who they perceive to be just as biased as they have become, and therefore more partisan hardliners in Washington. 

These effects on the American voter base have been thoroughly documented in recent years by several research institutions. The Pew Research Institution recently released an extensive study analyzing survey data of consumers of politically charged media. The researchers found that conservatives are more likely to only listen to one source of media that already reflects their own political ideology, while liberals are more likely to only have friends that share their political ideology(Mitchell). These trends are worrying for a political system based on compromise because it shows that political media is making politically conscious individuals less open to interacting with ideas or people that disagree with their political views. This in turn forces politicians to reflect this political isolation in order to gain these people’s(20% of the voter base) votes. This trend has spread into more than just political news. The study found that “In personal conversations about politics, those on the right and left are more likely to largely hear views in line with their own thinking”(Mitchell). Politically charged news has caused people to only interact with people within their own political bubble, which makes them less conditioned to hear out anyone with a view different from their own. These trends are extremely bad for American politics because politicians have to respond to the views of their electorate in order to gain their votes, meaning that in order to get elected, politicians have to reflect the same ideological isolation and reluctance to cooperate that their constituents do. 

Because party-biased media is pushing American voters farther and farther away from center, their representatives in Congress are forced to follow them there. Political gridlock has been at a steady increase the last 50 years and the trend can be explained by looking at the effects the media has had on American voters. Because voters have been pushed to the far wings, it is less politically rewarding for a politician to work across the aisle. The Independent Voter Network explains, “with today’s almost evenly-split electorate and congressional terms primarily focused on reelection, there is little to no cause to vote across party lines”(Iniguez). This pattern is significantly augmented by the popularization of online news and far-wing news that have only more recently have become mainstream and can be much more persuasive towards its readers. In the same study where newspapers were given to random families in one Virginia county, the participants were also given a survey asking their opinions on political topics. The survey concluded that there was “no effect of receiving either paper on knowledge of political events, opinions of those events, or on voter turnout in the 2005 gubernatorial election”(Gerber). Politically biased news has always existed, but it is the more modern introduction of more persuasive news outlets that have caused a direct shift in the way voters stand on the political spectrum. 

The process of polarized media altering the electorate has been studied and documented in detail by many researchers. In the analytical book, How Partisan Media Polarize America, author Matthew Levendusky used data from a detailed NAES data pool documenting a large sample of voters from the 2008 presidential election, their political views, media consumption habits, and their voting records. Using this data, he was able to compare voters’ media consumption habits with their voting records and change in political opinions. He concluded that, “watching like-minded media made subjects approximately 5 percent more likely to vote for their party’s candidate in the 2008 election”(Levendusky, 118). He also included a graph displaying data showing that the more like-minded shows a subject watches changes their political opinion more significantly. This data provides a detailed explanation of how political media leads to a more polarized Washington through a several step process. First, the voter base is exposed to political media, making them overall more likely to vote farther from center the more they watch. Politicians see this trend and realize that it is easier to gain the votes of their more biased electorate by reflecting the uncompromising party bias they are being exposed to. This leads to more party hardliners from both sides being elected to congress who are less willing to compromise with each other and therefore more gridlock. 

While several reputable sources suggest that Washington gridlock are largely due to other issues, they are missing some crucial information. A report from Al Jazeera states that “A critical look at the recent structural shifts in the American political system shows that the gridlock in Washington is caused by increasing inequality and benefits the rich”(McElwee). It is difficult to deny that income inequality does play a role in media polarization, however the author is overestimating the degree of the effects of income inequality. In a study comparing rates of income inequality with rates of Washington gridlock by political scientists John Duca and Jason Saving, “Inequality — the divide between rich and poor — may have contributed to political polarization, but less than media fragmentation”(Trilling). In the study, Duca and Saving include a line graph of Cable TV market share from 1951 to 2011, juxtaposed with lines representing House and Senate polarization. The lines are almost exactly parallel to each other, meaning that as cable TV became more popular, and the politically charged news that came with it, it directly led to an increase in congressional polarization. Later on in the report, there is a second graph with the same lines representing polarization in the Senate and House, only this time it is compared to a line representing income inequality in the U.S. These two lines share significantly less similarities than the graph of cable TV market share, which suggests that the increasing popularity of polarizing media is more directly related to gridlock in Washington than income inequality. While politically biased media is not the only factor that affects inefficiency in Washington, research has shown that it is the most direct factor because it shifts the voter base farther from center, forcing their representatives in congress to follow them. 

As much as people love to blame their political representatives for partisan gridlock in Washington, they fail to remember that they are our representatives and are only in Washington because they reflect their constituency’s views enough for them to be elected. The real issue lies within the information that the voters themselves are using to inform their political opinions. Although most people who consume political media are good-hearted people who are genuinely attempting to find a source of information that they deem most accurate, so many people fall into a trap by choosing only sources that provide a constant feed of information that they only agree with. This behavior makes them significantly more fervent in the beliefs of the party they already agree with and less likely to want to compromise with the other side of which they are only exposed to unfavorable analysis of. Because of this political stubbornness that they have acquired, when they go to the ballot box they are going to elect a candidate who is just as politically stubborn as they are. So before anyone blames the corrupt Washington politicians for their inability to pass legislation, they should turn off Fox News or MSNBC and instead find a news source that isn’t designed to prey on their pre-existing biases but rather one dedicating to giving the American voter all of the information he or she needs to do their part in keeping American democracy as the protector of freedom and prosperity in the United States for centuries to come. 
