Partisan media drives wedge between citizens.

• Position: YOUR LIFE

Viewing partisan news reports from both the conservative and liberal viewpoints does not make people more accepting of citizens on the other side of the political fence, according to a study in the journal Human Communication Research, which examines citizens' media consumption in the U.S. and Israel.

People who consume a greater amount of partisan media content are more polarized--even if they view partisan content from both sides. That finding is worrisome, maintains lead author R. Kelly Garret. "It means that getting your news from two partisan outlets on opposite sides of an issue is not the same as getting your news from one relatively neutral news outlet that tries to present both sides."

Rather than seeking truth, people who visit both liberal and conservative news sites may be looking for an opportunity to see how wrong the other side is, he indicates. 'These results really underscore the importance of preserving a nonpartisan news media."

The findings are important because they essentially were replicated in two countries where the political culture and the news media are very different from each other. The U.S. data came from a survey of citizens taken in the fall of 2012, before the presidential election. The Israeli data came from a survey of citizens just before and after the 2013 Israeli national election.

The results show that the more people visit partisan news sites associated with their own views, the more...