March 15, 2020
IGNORANCE IS BASE:
Older Americans are more worried about coronavirus -- unless they're Republican (Philip Bump, March 14, 2020, Washington Post)
On the other hand, they were way ahead of the curve on President Obama being a gay Muslim Socialist from Kenya...It's worth noting a significant part of Sal Gentile's expressed lack of concern about the virus: his pointed mention about what "TV stations" were advocating.Pew data indicate that about 3-in-10 members of both political parties identify cable news as their most common platform for political news. But the preferred cable news station varies widely depending on a viewer's politics. Almost no Democrats of retirement age identify Fox News as their main source of political or election news. Fully half of Republicans did.Fox News, of course, is home to a number of hosts who've dismissed the threat posed by the coronavirus, framing the sense of urgency conveyed on other networks as being about Trump's presidency rather than the public health. If that is the message that half of older Republicans are hearing, it's not really a surprise that they are less concerned about the virus.
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 15, 2020 12:00 AM