--- title: Survey: Conservatives Cluster Around One News Source description: And liberals make fickle friends canonical: https://time.com/3528958/conservatives-liberals-news-pew/ author: Denver Nicks article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-21T19:39:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:07:19.851Z article:section: Politics og:title: Survey: Conservatives Cluster Around One News Source og:description: And liberals make fickle friends og:url: https://time.com/3528958/conservatives-liberals-news-pew/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Survey: Conservatives Cluster Around One News Source twitter:description: And liberals make fickle friends twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Conservatives Cluster Around Fox News, While Liberals Vary News Sources  by [Denver Nicks](/author/denver-nicks/)  ## Denver Nicks Oct 21, 2014 7:39 PM CUT  by [Denver Nicks](/author/denver-nicks/)  ## Denver Nicks Oct 21, 2014 7:39 PM CUT  Pew Research Center The most ideologically extreme Americans, both liberals and conservatives, have this much in common: they dominate our politics and drive our political discourse with far more influence than people with more mixed views. But when it comes to where they get their information the two groups could hardly be further apart, according to a [survey](http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/ "undefined") out Tuesday from the Pew Research Center’s Journalism project. The survey results reflect a longterm trend of balkanization in American media, as the Internet and cable television, by giving people a wider array of choices, opened the way for news outlets increasingly tailored to particular ideological positions. Nearly half of “consistent conservatives” go to Fox News as their main source of news about politics and government. Though the same group distrusts 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey, 88% of them trust Fox News. They’re more likely to have friends with the same political views and more likely than any other ideological group to hear views in line with their own expressed on Facebook. Compare that with “consistent liberals,” who depend on a wider variety of news sources—chiefly CNN, MSNBC, NPR and The New York _Times—_and who tend to trust news outlets much more so than conservatives. Perhaps because they’re more likely to see political views that diverge from their own on Facebook, consistent liberals are more likely than anyone else to de-friend someone on a social network, or even end a good old fashioned brick-and-mortar friendship, over a political disagreement. If you yearn for a less contentious, ideologue-driven version of American politics it’s not all bad news.  Pew Research Center A strong majority of people who pay attention to political posts on Facebook (98%) say that at least some of the time they see posts with views that differ from their own. And among web users Facebook is far and away the biggest social media site and among one of the top sources of political news. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3528958/conservatives-liberals-news-pew/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3528958/conservatives-liberals-news-pew/"},"headline":"Conservatives Cluster Around Fox News, While Liberals Vary News Sources","datePublished":"2014-10-21T19:39:23.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:07:19.851Z","description":"And liberals make fickle friends","url":"https://time.com/3528958/conservatives-liberals-news-pew/","keywords":["Media","CNN","Conservative","News","MSNBC","Pew","fox news"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Denver Nicks","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/denver-nicks/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/media/","name":"Media"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3528958/conservatives-liberals-news-pew/","name":"Conservatives Cluster Around Fox News, While Liberals Vary News Sources"}}]}] ```