Poll says majority find news orgs. biased
Don Day August 18th, 2007
After this week’s Seattle Times incident, does it come as a shock that a majority of Americans think news organizations are biased? Pew asked 1,503 adults a variety of questions - and the results should give us collective pause. 53% overall think news organizations are biased; 68% of Internet users think orgs. are biased; 43% say the media is too critical of the country; 39% think facts are a problem; 53% say stories are “often inaccurate;” only 35% think journos care about the people they report on. Ouch.
52% of those surveyed think the media has a liberal tilt - including 75% of Republicans and 37% of democrats.
Good news? A little: 78% have a favorable impression of TV news - the same figure for newspapers - but both of those figures are on the decline since Pew began the polls in 1985. Tons more data here
5 Comments Add your own
1. Anonymous | August 18th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
After all that, 78% think favorably of TV news? Who knew jaded naivety was possible?
2. ! | August 18th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
one of the best articles i’ve read from ANY somewhat major news organization was written by a guy from fortune mag. and was published online yesterday at the close of the market.
it was based on the idea that the big guys never lose and there is only a free market when that market is going up. tens of thousands of little guys get wiped out of house and home in this “credit” crunch but wall street biggies “hold out their tin cup” and the fed obliges. “too big to fail”.
it lasted online for about 10 minutes. and hasn’t been seen since. good thing i printed out a copy and circulated it.
i’m telling you, this sh$t has to stop. people might begin to ask questions.
3. Anonymous | August 18th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Who’s the author, what’s the title? Does Google find it anywhere?
4. discreet_chaos | August 18th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
I’m a strong advocate for news, but I also know that there is a bias. Perhaps the researchers are all focused on liberal vs. conservative, but here in my town, there’s a station that I call the “crime channel” because they have a bias to spotlight the ridiculously high crime rate.
Another station has several people who have gone back and forth between tv news and being a spokesperson or consultant for various government bodies, so they have connections in the Capital or City Hall and their bias is to report news on those subjects. As for the third station, they’re pretty straight and obviously they put more emphasis on newsreaders, but they also have bureaus throughout the state and if you watch them, then you’re apt to get more news from the places where they have a presence.
As for newspapers, the new-fangled, corporate line is that they should be middle of the road, but that’s not their history and because they don’t use public airways, there’s no requirement that they need to be unbiased.
To illustrate this history, I’ve coded my name to point toward a biography of Josephus Daniels from the North Carolina State Library. It’s only a couple of screens long and though he’s known for some good things, there are many other things with which modern people would find fault, but through it all, he was the owner of a powerful newspaper and he had his biases, as did William Randolph Hearst who is name-checked in the article.
Unbiased newspapers are a relatively new thing and I’d say that the ideal has only been around for a quarter century or less. It isn’t their history and though they may teach such things in journalism school nowadays and though their corporate owners may insist upon it, it will probably take a while until society catches-up with this radical reinvention of an industry
5. discreet_chaos | August 18th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
PS) As a follow-up to my diatribe for those who do not know, it should be noted that the Daniels family were the ones to sell the N&O to McClatchy in 1995.
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