Broad agreement in U.S. – even among partisans – on which news outlets are part of the ‘mainstream media’

To learn more about how Americans think about the mainstream media, Pew Research Center asked a representative sample of U.S. adults whether they consider each of 13 different news outlets to be a part of the mainstream media or not. The outlets were selected to represent a range of audience sizes and sectors.

Overall, a majority of Americans consider seven of these outlets to be part of the mainstream media. That includes the one national network news outlet included in the analysis (ABC News), all three major cable news outlets asked about (MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN) and three legacy print publications: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

The remaining six outlets in the survey – five of which began as digital entities – draw different responses from the public, with a plurality or majority of Americans saying they don’t know enough to decide whether each one is part of the mainstream media or not.