Wednesday's Biased Item - September 10, 2008

Media Credibility Plummets

Directions

Read the excerpt below (from MediaResearch.org). Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.

Questions

Are you surprised by the results of the Pew Research Center poll on the news media?  Explain your answer.

Excerpt

"Over the last 10 years," the just-released ... news consumption survey from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press determined, "virtually every news organization or program has seen its credibility marks decline" and "Democrats continue to give most news organizations much higher credibility ratings than do Republicans."

Based on past Pew polls, CNN touts itself as "the most trusted name in news," but the percent who "believe all or most" of what CNN reports has fallen ... to 30%, since Pew first posed the question in 1998. Yet, in a sign of how far the news media have fallen in the eyes of the public, that puts CNN at the top of the 12 television news outlets analyzed, as well as above all the newspapers and online sources. Believability for ABC News, CBS News and NBC News is down six points over the past ten years, to 24% for ABC and NBC, 22% for CBS, but that's still better than the mere 18% who "believe all or most" of what they read in the New York Times.

The extensive polling conducted in May also discovered that the audiences for CNN and MSNBC, "which were heavily Democratic two years ago, have become even more so: fully 51% of CNN's regular viewers are Democrats while only 18 percent are Republicans. MSNBC's audience makeup is similar -- 45% of regular viewers of MSNBC are Democrats, 18 percent are Republicans" and "the regular audience for nightly network news also is now about two-to-one Democratic (45 percent vs. 22 percent Republican)."

Fox News Channel attracts a more balanced audience: "Currently, 39% of regular Fox News viewers are Republicans while 33% are Democrats; in 2006, the margin was 38% to 31%."

("Regular viewers of The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," not surprisingly, "are much more liberal than the public at large. More than a third of Colbert's regular viewers (36%) describe their political views as liberal and 45% of regular Daily Show viewers say they are liberal.") 

Read the entire post at MRC.org.

Read the conclusions on Media Credibility from the Pew Poll at People-Press.org.