Americans who get their news primarily from cable are the only people who believe that Israel is not committing a genocide in Gaza, according to a new survey that examined the relationship between attitudes toward the war and news consumption habits.
The survey puts numbers on trends that have become increasingly apparent: Cable news viewers are more supportive of Israel’s war effort, less likely to think Israel is committing war crimes, and less interested in the war in general. People who get their news primarily from social media, YouTube, or podcasts, by contrast, generally side with the Palestinians, believe Israel is committing war crimes and genocide, and consider the issue of significant importance.
That seems somewhat surprising, considering how much internet media post bias also exists.
I guess cable users only stick to one or two news channels?
It’s not surprising to me. There is no more “news” anymore, it’s all opinions at this point. Usually not good opinions either, it’s all just a carefully crafted narrative or crafted to generate outrage.
This is why I think things like Tiktok are actually useful. I don’t know another place to easily find 24/7 live video of the protests.
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Cable news seems to be allergic to providing any kind of context no matter what the issue is, despite having 24 hours to fill. They’ll typically just loop the same 10 second clip from the event and then have 2 pundits who don’t actually know anything talk about it.
Well, if you open up Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter and co. you can see the destruction, you can see Palestinians searching through the rubble to find survivors and recover the dead. You can see children starving and you can see crying people holding the bodies of their loved ones. And then you can also see IDF soldiers bragging about the people they killed, filming themselves looting, burning down houses and desecrating peoples belongings. You can see them filming themselves torturing and abusing prisoners and laughing about it all.
When you are exposed to the stream of more or less raw information, it doesn’t take much to understand the situation as what it is. Yes there is bias in there. But when the supposedly “good guys” from the IDF are showing themselves proudly committing atrocities, then the only people to not consider it a genocide are completely brainwashed. And unfortunately that audience exists too, cheering on the atrocities committed in their name.
It does say primary source of news is from cable, that doesn’t mean they don’t use these other platforms.
And you have to believe these people’s social media is an echo chamber of their cable news