Polarized U.S. voters restrict their sources of news: poll

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Politically polarized Americans have little overlap in their sources of news, with almost half of conservatives relying on Fox News and liberals turning to a range of outlets, a poll showed on Tuesday. The survey by the Pew Research Center about how Americans get news on politics and government underscores the gap between Republicans and Democrats, and liberals and conservatives, ahead of mid-term elections on Nov. 4. "When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds," the poll said. "There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust." The survey found that 47 percent of steadfast conservatives relied on Fox News, a unit of News Corp, as their main source for political and governmental information. The figure is easily the highest for any media source in the survey. Consistent liberals have less media loyalty, with half turning to four media outlets. They were led by CNN, part of Time Warner Inc, at 15 percent of liberals, and trailed by Comcast Corp unit MSNBC; NPR, formerly National Public Radio; and the New York Times. Consistent conservatives were more distrustful than trustful of two-thirds of 36 news outlets measured in the survey. Eighty-eight percent of down-the-line conservatives trusted Fox News. Across-the-board liberals expressed more trust than distrust in 28 of the 36 news sources. For them, NPR, private non-profit PBS and Britain's BBC are the most trusted sources. Despite the news gap, down-the-line liberals and conservatives are not isolated from dissenting views. Forty-seven percent of steadfast conservatives and 59 percent of consistent liberals said they sometimes disagreed with one of the people with whom they most discussed politics. Middle-of-the-road Americans are less focused on politics and rely on a wider range of news sources. They include Fox News, CNN, local television and Google News and Yahoo News, which gather stories from various outlets, the survey said. The poll was carried out from March 19 to April 29 among 2,901 U.S. adults, with the margin of error 2.3 percentage points. (Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Bill Trott)