When citizens perceive news coverage as ideologically slanted, their crucial trust in the (traditional) news media decreases. Research on the so-called hostile media phenomenon indeed shows that an alarming number of people consider news coverage as disadvantaging their own political preferences and favoring opposing (partisan) views. However, most of this research is conducted in an experimental setting, and we do not know how this works in the real world, where citizens predominantly consume news from media outlets they trust and perceive as ideologically like-minded. By questioning Belgian citizens about their perceptions of partisan bias in their preferred news outlet, this study shows that the hostile media phenomenon also holds in a least likely context; even content produced by “friendly” news sources is seen as ideologically slanted, potentially contributing to citizens’ general distrust in the news media. Moreover, we find that especially right-wing citizens and strong partisans believe their news outlet disadvantages their preferred party.

当公民认为新闻报道在意识形态上是倾斜的时，他们对（传统）新闻媒体的关键信任就会降低。所谓敌对媒体现象研究确实表明，令人震惊的人们认为新闻报道不利于他们自己的政治偏好并偏向于反对派（党派）的观点。但是，大多数研究是在实验性环境下进行的，我们不知道这种方法在现实世界中的工作原理，在该世界中，公民主要从他们信任的媒体上消费新闻，并认为自己的思想观念相似。通过向比利时公民询问他们偏爱的新闻媒体对党派偏见的看法，这项研究表明，敌对媒体现象也存在于可能性最小的情况下。甚至“友善”新闻源产生的内容在意识形态上也被认为是倾斜的，有可能加剧公民对新闻媒体的普遍不信任。而且，