Friday, August 10, 2007

Pew poll: US public sees news media as biased, inaccurate, uncaring


The Pew Research Center in its Summary of Findings on a brand new poll showed that more than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on.

The internet news audience – roughly 25% of all Americans who rely on the internet as their main news source are among the most critical of the dinosaur press .

Roughly two-thirds (68%) of those who get most of their news from the internet say that news organizations do not care about the people they report on, and 53% believe that news organizations are too critical of America. By comparison, smaller percentages of the general public fault the press for not caring about people they report on (53%), and being too critical of America (43%).
























It's interesting to look at past statistics and see how much respect for the dino media has eroded since 1985:

























And to look at the partisan differences Pew noted on their responses:






















In essence, the higher favorability ratings by Democrats of the dinosaur press could be regarded as almost prima facie proof of Leftward bias by the dinosaur media.

Now,here's the good news
- since nature abhors a vacuum, and media types are hardly unaware of their problem, we can likely expect a fair amount of improvement. Fox News, the Washington Times, talk Radio, the blogosphere and the rest of the `new media' arose because there was a market waiting to happen because the dinosaur media skewed so far to the Left.

Money talks, and I already see the signs that the mainstream media is not only taking the new media seriously but is attempting to clean up its own act.

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