You are what you read?

I am not confident that this rises to the level of useful information but it certainly meets the criteria of intriguing data.  From Where Jurors in Trump Hush-Money Trial Say They Get Their News by Charlie Smart.  The subheading is Prosecutors and defense lawyers tried to divine the political leanings of prospective jurors in the former president’s Manhattan criminal trial from their answers to questions about what media they consume.

Twelve jurors and six alternates, eighteen in total.  Probably overwhelmingly from the top three quintiles of New Yorkers.  Certainly strongly Democrats and Progressives.  

Lots of caveats.  Self-report surveys are notoriously unreliable.  On the other hand, it is a court related matter where people are perhaps more likely to be honest.  Maybe.  On the other hand some people might use their answers to try and get themselves screened out of a high profile case while others might do the very opposite.  So all sorts of reasons to be suspect of the accuracy of the responses.  

Are these the news sources representative of those for most Americans?  Probably not.  Are they the news sources representative of those for most urban residents?  Maybe.

Here are the answers.  

    

Click to enlarge.

Only for this particular trial, what does the epistemic world look like, given the reading and viewing habits of this particular New York City jury?

2 (11%) of the jurors consume no news.

2 (11%) get their news from only a single source.

6 (33%) get their news from at least two sources.

8 (45%) get their news from at least three sources or more.

Seemingly a reasonably well informed population (defining well informed as consuming a lot of news which is, in itself, a debatable proposition).  

But what about the orientation and disposition of those news sources?  Ideally, one hypothetically everyone to consume two conservative oriented news sources, two progressive, and 2 neutral.  Much more than most people consume.

Stipulating that the news rooms (independent of the editorial desk) all tend to be overwhelmingly progressive/Democrat, and acknowledging no one is scrupulously neutral, I assigned most news sources based on their general reputation and readership.  I used the Hunter Biden Laptop as a general indicator.

Conservative press/platforms (5): The Daily Mail, Fox News, The New York Post, Truth Social, The Wall Street Journal

Liberal/Progressive (11):  BBC, CNBC, CNN, Facebook, Google, MSNBC, The New York Times, Reuters, USA Today, The Washington Post, WNYC

Neutral (3): NY1, TikTok, X

Each of these could be argued, especially by degree, but I think the assessments reasonably comport with evidence.  5 conservative platforms, 11 progressive, and 3 neutral sounds about right for New York City.

Now, the key question, from an epistemic perspective, just how close minded is the jury pool?  If the ideal is that people get lots of information from many perspectives, how close does this jury pool come to that ideal?

Again, recognizing that the eighteen members ranged from zero news sources up to five, I looked at the mix of sources for each juror.  If all their sources were from one side or the other, I classified that as 100%.  If, for example, someone got news from The New York Times and from TikTok (one progressive and one neutral), I classified them as leans progressive.  If they, for example, read both The New York Times and The New York Post (one progressive and one conservative), I classified that as Heterodox.  If they only got news from neutral sources, then Neutral.  

The results are:

100% Con - 0% of the jury

100% Lib - 39% 

Lean Con - 6%

Lean Lib - 17%

Heterodox - 28%

Neutral - 0%

None - 11%

Right out of the starting gates, 56% (39+17) have news which overwhelmingly or strongly leans towards a progressive view of the world.  Uh oh.  

Only 6% present as at all conservative.  

Robust discussion and assessment clearly depends hugely upon the five individuals who present as Heterodox (one of whom is an alternate.)

There is a limit to what how much reliance can be placed on this data but it is perhaps indicative.

Other sources for reality checks:

Sources of news:  https://www.4media-group.com/blog/intelligence/more-than-half-of-u-s-consumers-watch-tv-news-and-read-news-online/ 

Most popular news platforms:  https://www.statista.com/statistics/717651/most-popular-news-platforms/ 

Where Americans get their news:  https://www.prdaily.com/where-americans-get-their-news-new-data-from-pew-research/ 

Pew Social Media and News Fact Sheet:  https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/