As if a shrinking news hole in newspapers, diminishing advertising, and sinking readership isn’t enough…as if broadcast and cable networks pulling out all stops to survive in the ratings-dependent dog-eat-dog world of broadcast/cable journalism isn’t enough…now there’s a new poll that shows Americans distrust the mainstream news media more than ever:
More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don’t care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed.
And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news — roughly one quarter of all Americans — were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.
More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don’t care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased.
More than half — 53 percent — of Internet users also faulted the news organizations for “failing to stand up for America”.
Among those who get their news from newspapers and television, criticism of the news organizations was up to 20 percentage points lower than among Internet news audiences, who tend to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole, according to Pew.
The poll indicates an across the board fall in the public’s opinion on the news media since 1985, when a similar survey was conducted by Times Mirror, Pew Research said.
“Two decades ago, public attitudes about how news organizations do their job were less negative. Most people believed that news organizations stood up for America… a majority believed that news organizations got the facts straight,” Pew said in a report.
P.S. We here at TMV regret creating such problems for the mainstream news media. But we do try to get our facts straight and seldom messss upphp..
And we’re happy to find out that you think we care (see graphic above).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.