Study Finds That Just 3.4% of American Journalists Are Republicans
A new study from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications found that just 3.4% of American journalists are Republicans.
The study is based “on an online survey with 1,600 U.S. journalists conducted in early 2022” and is the latest in a series of studies stretching back to 1971 that take the temperature of the fourth estate’s partisan lean, job satisfaction, and professional attitudes.
When the first iteration of the study came out over 50 years ago, 35.5% of respondents said they were Democrats, 25.7% said they were Republicans, and 32.5% said they were Independents. The percentage that call themselves Democrats or independents have bounced around over the years, with the proportion of Democrats reaching a high of 44.1% in 1992.
Republicans, on the other hand, have seen their ranks steadily with the only exception being a 1.6% bump between 1992 and 2002.
The last iteration of the study before this most recent one, pegged the proportion of Republican journalists in America at 7.1%, the proportion of Democrats at 28.1%, and the proportion of Independents at 50.2% in 2013.
In the years since, the already shockingly low proportion of Republicans has been cut in half, while the proportion of Democrats has increased to 36.4% and proportion of Independents has ticked upwards to 51.7%
In 2022, just 3.4% of journalists were Republicans.
That figure was 18% in 2002 and 25.7% in 1971.
As with most professions, conservatives have been increasingly excluded or purged from the ranks of journalists.
If you wonder why the media is the way it is today, this is why. pic.twitter.com/AuZ8iCMiwQ
— Kevin Bass PhD MS (@kevinnbass) December 27, 2023
According to a Gallup poll from November, newsrooms are wildly out of step with the general public. Independents do make up the largest proportion of the population at 40%, but the same proportion of Americans (29%) are Republicans as Democrats.
Another Gallup poll from this fall found that while 58% of Democrats and 29% of Independents have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media, just 11% of Republicans feel the same way.
