Trump supporters want just the facts from their news media

How do you take your news: Plain or with a splash of interpretation?

Turns out, your answer is reasonably correlated to who you voted for. A new survey by the Pew Research Center asked supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton how news should be presented.

The two options: The facts with and without interpretation.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Trump supporters favored news without interpretation by two-to-one. Clinton supporters were split 50/50.

Pew researchers Michael Barthel and Jeffrey Gottfried noted that these numbers might be a little skewed considering the survey was taken in the midst of the election.

"This may be linked to a perception among Republicans that coverage of their candidate had been too tough. Among Republicans, 46% thought coverage of Trump had been too tough, while only three-in-ten Democrats thought the same of coverage of Clinton, according to Pew Research Center’s mid-September survey," Barthel and Gottfried wrote.

Together, the people surveyed ended up favoring the presentation of facts without interpretation (59%) to facts with interpretation (40%).

Opposition to interpretation did not mean that the public expects journalists to just serve as stenographers. Pew's survey found that people still want fact checking, with 81% of respondents seeing the act as a major or minor responsibility of journalists.

"Since a majority prefer the news media to avoid interpretation, the public may be more likely to approve of the news media analyzing public figures’ statements when presented as fact-checking – using facts to either verify a piece of information or correct a piece of misinformation – rather than as analysis or commentary," Barthel and Gottfried wrote.