If the landscape in the journalism world seems to lean left, it’s with good reason. The fewest journalists ever say they are Republicans, according to a 2022 study from the Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.
The findings show of 1,600 journalists polled, just 3.4% identified as Republicans. More than 36% said they are Democrats, and the majority, 51%, said they were independent. Nearly 9% of respondents identified as “other.”
The numbers are a drastic change from 50 years ago, when the poll started. In 1971, more than 35% identified as Democrats and over 25% identified as Republicans. In that same poll, nearly 33% of respondents said they were independents.
The numbers have bounced around over the decades. Democrats reached their peak at 44% in 1992, but in recent years, Republicans in media have steadily declined.
The previous version of the study, released in 2013, shows 7% of journalists as Republicans. Meanwhile, independents and Democrats saw an increase in those numbers. A decade later, Democrats are up more than 6% and independents are up nearly 2%.
The latest figures are not in step with the U.S general population.
A Gallup poll in November, revealed 40% of Americans identify as independent. Republicans and Democrats both poll at an even 29%.
A different Gallup poll splits faith in the media along partisan lines. In the poll, 58% of Democrats and 29% of Independents have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media. On the other hand, just 11% of Republicans said they felt the same way.
So why do Republicans find themselves trending towards the extinction category in news?
David Brooks, of the New York Times, voiced his thoughts in an August opinion piece.
“When I began my career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some crusty working-class guys around the newsroom,” Brooks wrote. “Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite college-dominated profession.”
A 2016 Pew Study found highly educated adults, especially those who attended graduate school, are far more likely than those with less education to take liberal positions.
A 2022 Pew Research poll found that younger journalists in the U.S. are much more likely to support unions than their seasoned colleagues.
Younger journalists would lineup politically with national trends.
NPR reported Democrats beat Republicans among those aged 18-29 overwhelmingly in the last midterm election. This age group supported Democrats by almost 30 points over Republicans, as noted by exit poll data.
