How the News Politicizes Science

Critica Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Scales, who is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Weill Cornell College of Medicine in New York City, called our attention recently to an interesting paper in the journal  Political Communication, titled “Politicizing masks? Examining the volume and content of local news coverage of face coverings in the U.S. through the COVID-19 pandemic.” The first author of the article is Markus Neumann of the Wesleyan University Media Project, and a co-author is Jeff Niederdeppe of Cornell University, who is a member of Critica’s Advisory Committee. The paper reports on a rigorous study of face mask reporting found on local television news broadcasts, which is distinct from national news and cable news.

At first glance, two things strike us when we read the title of this article. First, why should something like face masks be the subject of political debate? Scientists may disagree about the extent to which wearing a face mask reduces the risk of acquiring or transmitting an airborne virus like the one that causes Covid-19, but why should there be a difference between Democrats and Republicans about this? Second, does anyone get their news from local television anymore? Don’t we all get all our news from cable television, the internet, and social media platforms these days?

Most readers of Critica commentaries probably know the answer to the first question: face masks, like so many things involving the pandemic, are in fact deeply political, with evidence that people who identify as politically  conservative are more likely to doubt their usefulness than people who identify as liberal. This is, of course, disturbing because the scientific consensus is that  face masks do in fact offer some protection against transmission of aerosolized viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

Many U.S. Americans Get Their News from Local TV

The answer to the second question may surprise some, but it turns out that U.S. Americans not only still get a lot of their news from local TV, but as noted by the Neumann et al article it “remains a prominent and trusted information source for most Americans.” This is especially the case for Black Americans. A recent  Pew Research Center report finds that about three-quarters of Black Americans at least sometimes get news from TV, compared to 62% of both white and Hispanic adults and 52% of Asian adults. In that survey, “38% of Black Americans say they prefer to get their news on TV over any other platform.”

So, what are people seeing on television that may be contributing to the politicization of face masks? The study in Political Communication examined reports from 758 local TV stations in 210 media markets between February 1, 2020 and November 23, 2021. In all, the investigators looked at 2, 267, 059 local news items, searching for evidence of reports that emphasized controversy, conflict, and partisan clues concerning face masks.

Sinclair Group Broadcasts Stand Out for Promoting Controversy

They found plenty of news coverage about face masks, most of which did not meet their criteria for promoting politicization. But the most striking finding of the study is that stations owned by the conservative media company Sinclair Broadcast Group “are more likely to air stories containing controversy and controversial stories with partisan cues…”

According to a February 16 report in the  Washington Post, Sinclair now owns 185 stations across the country. The report cites a  study by researchers from Stanford and Emory Universities that showed a “significantly rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage,” when Sinclair takes over a news station. By our calculation, Sinclair owns about one fifth of local TV news stations, so that a substantial portion of the U.S. American public is now exposed to its version of the news. According to the Neumann et al study, that means they received stories about face masks during the first years of the pandemic that emphasized controversies and conflicts about them and put forth partisan cues that reinforced the idea that wearing a face mask is a matter of political persuasion.

How did something that should be decided based on scientific evidence become the subject of partisan politics? The article in Political Communication traces one reason: the changing face mask guidance from federal health agencies. As late as March 2020 the CDC told us that except for healthcare workers we don’t need to wear masks, then reversed this in April 2020, recommending that we should wear them, especially in crowded places. In May 2021 the CDC then changed these guidelines to say that masks were optional for people who had been vaccinated, but then reversed that again in July 2021 when the Delta variant became prevalent and recommended universal indoor masking. These changes in face mask guidance were based on CDC experts’ assessment of a changing evidence base as more information about the virus emerged, but surely confused people and led some to distrust CDC and other federal health agencies.

Beyond the confusion and mistrust caused by fluctuations in face mask guidance, however, the Neumann et al study suggests that what we are fed by local TV news may also play a role in politicization. The study’s authors are careful to caution that their research does not prove causation, but it seems to us unlikely that politicized ideas caused Sinclair stations to focus on face mask controversies and conflicts. Rather, it seems more likely that those broadcasts encouraged partisan ideas about face masks. The article notes other studies showing that “Masks are particularly divisive among the public, with partisanship being highly predictive of attitudes about masks.” Thus, holding a political idea about face masks determines in part whether a person will actually wear one.

Promoting the idea that there is controversy surrounding the effectiveness of face masks is misleading. Although it is true that little attention had been devoted to them by scientists at the start of the pandemic and new information led to a confusing runaround of guidance from CDC and other agencies, there is now  good evidence that face masks do in fact work to reduce the chances of getting or transmitting Covid-19. They aren’t close to 100% effective, of course, but when combined with social distancing and, most important, vaccination, they reduce risk. A  Cochrane report claiming to have found they don’t work has been  widely disputed by experts. Sinclair broadcasts that create the impression there is controversy about face masks are adding doubt to a matter of scientific inquiry where there turns out to be little uncertainty.

Somehow, the notion has arisen in conservative political circles that face masks are an attempt to control people’s behavior, that they are associated with risks, and that they are ineffective. None of these things is true. Surely, it would have been helpful if the CDC and other agencies had acknowledged early on that the science behind face masks was rapidly emerging during the early days of the pandemic and that guidelines would undoubtedly change both as more studies were published and as the characteristics of the virus changed over time. Nevertheless, it seems that misleading news broadcasts contributed to politicization of face masks, and this serves as a good example of how the information people receive even from sources they trust like local TV news can distort our attitudes and negatively affect our behaviors. It is critical that we retrieve science from the grasp of partisan news broadcasts.