Poll: More Than 8 In 10 Americans Say Media Is Biased
Political Division Caused by Media
Elle Reynolds
The Federalist
Eighty-six percent of Americans believe there is “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of political bias in the way the media covers news, according to a Knight Foundation/Gallup poll released on Tuesday. The number of Americans that see bias in the media is up almost 25 percentage points from 62 percent in 2007. Almost half of Americans — 49 percent — now say there’s a great deal of political bias in news coverage.
While Republicans are more likely to say there’s a “great deal” of bias and Democrats more often said there was a “fair amount,” large majorities of both political parties believed that some bias existed: 78 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans.
These numbers were collected from polling of more than 20,000 Americans between November and February, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the resulting media coverage of both events.
Not only do most Americans recognize media bias, they also believe it’s intentional. When asked about their views of news organizations they distrust, 79 percent of poll respondents said those outlets were “trying to persuade people to adopt a certain viewpoint.” When news is inaccurate, 54 percent of Americans think it’s because reporters are “misrepresenting the facts,” while 28 percent assume they’re “making them up entirely.”
And more than 8 in 10 Americans — 84 percent — assign the media either a great deal (48 percent) or a moderate amount (36 percent) of blame for political division.
It’s not that Americans don’t have high expectations for what the media should be doing; they just don’t think the news industry is hitting the mark. Eighty-four percent said news media is critical or very important to democracy, and 92 percent believe that providing “accurate and fair news reports” is a critical or very important role.
But almost three-fourths (73 percent) of Americans believe it’s a “major problem” for so much bias to exist in news that’s supposed to be objective. That number has increased from 65 percent in 2017.
Over half — 56 percent — also admitted to recognizing bias in their own go-to publications.
Finally, younger Americans are trusting the media less than their parents and grandparents. Only 19 percent of Americans under 30 and 27 percent of Americans 30-49 had a favorable opinion of the news media, compared with 44 percent of those over 65.
Elle Reynolds is an intern at the Federalist, and a senior at Patrick Henry College studying government and journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
Showing posts with label Media Corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media Corruption. Show all posts
Saturday, 8 August 2020
Thursday, 16 April 2020
Too Silly For Words
Media’s Latest Strategy To Fight Trump
Remove Him From His Own Press Conferences
After failing to censor President Trump's press conferences, media are working on a new plan of pressuring him to remove himself from his press conferences.
Mollie Hemingway
The Federalist
For years, the media complained that President Donald Trump wasn’t holding enough press conferences. Now, as the media’s poor performance in his daily coronavirus press conferences is on worldwide display, they’re begging him to leave his own press conferences, and leave them alone to craft their anti-Trump storylines.
When March polls showed Trump receiving unusually high marks for his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, and the media receiving their traditionally low marks for it, many journalists began pushing for censorship of the press conferences. While many outlets tried this approach, it obviously failed with viewers who turned to other outlets for the news they sought.
The media, however, continued to be mocked for the prevalence of silly and unserious questions from reporters who clearly think they come off better outside their echo chambers than they do.
In an attempt to regain control, the media have shifted to a new approach. Trump’s daily press conferences with updates on the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic are actually bad for him, yeah that’s the ticket!
The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, who would be known for their extreme anti-Trump posture and histrionic analysis if it weren’t shared by nearly everyone else in the White House press corps, laid out their case in a tendentious essay that the usual followers at many media outlets echoed throughout the day.
The article claims that “White House allies and Republican lawmakers” — not the embarrassed media — are deeply concerned by the briefings.
Remove Him From His Own Press Conferences
After failing to censor President Trump's press conferences, media are working on a new plan of pressuring him to remove himself from his press conferences.
Mollie Hemingway
The Federalist
For years, the media complained that President Donald Trump wasn’t holding enough press conferences. Now, as the media’s poor performance in his daily coronavirus press conferences is on worldwide display, they’re begging him to leave his own press conferences, and leave them alone to craft their anti-Trump storylines.
When March polls showed Trump receiving unusually high marks for his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, and the media receiving their traditionally low marks for it, many journalists began pushing for censorship of the press conferences. While many outlets tried this approach, it obviously failed with viewers who turned to other outlets for the news they sought.
The media, however, continued to be mocked for the prevalence of silly and unserious questions from reporters who clearly think they come off better outside their echo chambers than they do.
In an attempt to regain control, the media have shifted to a new approach. Trump’s daily press conferences with updates on the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic are actually bad for him, yeah that’s the ticket!
The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, who would be known for their extreme anti-Trump posture and histrionic analysis if it weren’t shared by nearly everyone else in the White House press corps, laid out their case in a tendentious essay that the usual followers at many media outlets echoed throughout the day.
The article claims that “White House allies and Republican lawmakers” — not the embarrassed media — are deeply concerned by the briefings.
Tuesday, 17 December 2019
Far, Far Worse Than Watergate
The FBI is corrupt, and Also the U.S. Media
The Inspector General’s Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude
Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept
December 13 2019
JUST AS WAS TRUE when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday’s issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds.
Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI’s gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.
If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that’s what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.
In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It’s brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.
Just a few excerpts from the report should suffice to end any debate for rational persons about how damning it is.
The Inspector General’s Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude
Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept
December 13 2019
JUST AS WAS TRUE when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday’s issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds.
Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI’s gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.
If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that’s what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.
In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It’s brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.
Just a few excerpts from the report should suffice to end any debate for rational persons about how damning it is.
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