Journalists love Twitter, the social networking game in which users who write the pithiest comments and hottest takes are rewarded with "retweets" and "likes" from their fellow users. Twitter is how political journalists follow the news and keep track of what other journalists and activists are saying about themselves. "Pod Save America," a popular politics podcast, is essentially a discussion among former Obama bros about the significance of their favorite tweets.
As difficult as it might be for professional journalists to accept, the truth is that spending too much time on Twitter is one of several factors—including income (high), education (college), location (New York City, Washington, D.C.), and extracurricular activities (partying with celebs)—that inhibit their ability to relate to normal Americans.
According to a recently published NBC News poll, just 28 percent of American adults said they use Twitter, compared with 69 percent who said they use Facebook. The population of Twitter users is significantly more supportive of Democrats compared with the American population. President Joe Biden's approval rating among Twitter users was 57 percent, versus just 42 percent among all adults. Nearly two-thirds of Twitter users said they wanted Democrats to control Congress in 2022, compared with 47 percent of the general public.
Additionally, that small minority of Twitter users was far more likely to support Democratic politicians, but was still out of touch compared with the majority of Democratic voters. Twitter users, for example, were more likely to have supported Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) or Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) in the 2020 Democratic primary than Joe Biden, who ended up winning the nomination. Some journalists even published articles about white professionals—a demographic that includes a lot of Twitter users—who loved Warren and were confused about why she wasn't doing better in the polls.
Professional journalists (and other liberal activists) live in a bubble. That's just a scientific fact. Unfortunately, it's also a problem for an industry tasked with providing the rest of the country with information and deciding which stories are "newsworthy" and which stories are just something Republicans are seizing on at a given moment.
In addition to supporting Democrats and being addicted to Twitter, journalists who cover politics are most likely to be out of touch with average Americans when it comes to: driving cars, buying gas, owning guns, being good at sports, being able to work from home, liking Hannah Gadsby's "comedy," knowing who Hannah Gadsby is, using the word "Latinx," and constantly thinking about racism, among other things.
For journalists looking to be less out of touch with average Americans and other normal human beings, deleting their Twitter accounts would be a good first step.