Voters: Elections 08, Media Biased
Although I sometimes get the impression that American voters are a bit more emotional than, say, Dutch voters, they are quite aware of the bias of the media in these elections. According to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll, 68% of Americans believe that journalists try to help the candidate that they want to win. Only 17% say reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of election campaigns.
Republican voters are more negative about the media than Democrats. 82% of Republicans say that journalists are biased and that this bias influences their work. 56% of Democrats, and 69% of voters not affiliated with either major party agree.
Race, gender, income, etc. has nothing to do with one’s beliefs on this subject.
Ideologically, political liberals give the least pessimistic assessment of reporters, but even 50% of those on the political left see bias. Thirty-three percent (33%) of liberals believe most reporters try to be objective. Moderates, by a 65% to 17% margin, see reporters as advocates, not scribes. Among political conservatives, only 7% see reporters as objective while 83% believe they are biased.
Given these results, it’s not surprising that 76% of voters believe the media has too much power and influence over elections. Just 3% believe the Fourth Estate has too little influence while 16% say the balance is about right.
Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Republicans believe the media has too much influence along with 80% of unaffiliated voters and 65% of Democrats.
Voters have little doubt as to who is benefitting from the media coverage this year—Barack Obama. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Obama has gotten the best coverage so far. Twenty-two percent (22%) say McCain has received the most favorable coverage while 14% say that Hillary got the best treatment.
At the other extreme, 43% say Clinton received the worst treatment from the media. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say the media was roughest on McCain and only 15% thought the media coverage was most unfair to Obama.
44% of Americans say they believe that the media will try to help Obama. This while only 13% think journalists will try to help McCain win. Remarkably enough, 24% think that journalists will try to be objective.
What is most interesting about these numbers is that journalists do not seem to care much. If they cared about objective reporting, we would hear journalists speak out about this matter, and we would see them speak to Americans in an attempt to find out why Americans think they are biased and what they can do about it / their bad reputation.
The result? Well, if the public believes that journalists are biased, increasingly more Americans will turn to blog for their news coverage. Most blogs are biased in one way or another, sure, but they are at least outspoken about it. And that is bad news for journalists, because it threatens their jobs.
But, instead of learning the right lesson from this development, one gets the impression that journalists think that they have to become more subjective (after all, blogs are subjective!). All the time they do not realize that people are not turning to blogs because blogs are biased, but because newspapers and networks are secretly biased as well. If journalists would be more objective, more people would take them seriously. Newspapers would sell more, not less, newspapers, and networks would have higher, not lower, ratings.
Here’s what disturbs me as I look forward. How will the media manipulate (or ignore) facts to promote agendas relating to other issues that will come up in our national debate?
Consider campaign-finance reform. Most media executives have a financial stake in keeping the corrupt system exactly as it is, because that would keep tons of candidate funds flowing to the media in the form of ad buys.
All that said, can we count on media executives in the future to insist on objective reporting about campaign-finance reform efforts?
Hot Air’s AP:
Our nutroots betters assure us that the press is thoroughly right-wing, so it must be McCain whom people believe is getting a free ride, yes? Not so much…
THIS HAD A MAJOR EFFECT ON THE PRIMARIES: MCCAIN WAS HELPED BY IT AND HILLARY HURT. THE MSM HAS THE MATCH UP THEY WANTED: A LIB HAWK VERSUS A LEFTIE DOVE.
The only people who continue to tell us they aren’t biased are the journalists themselves. Fortunately, no one believes them.
It is any wonder that fewer of us are buying their product?
They don’t care about any enabling when it helps their agenda, but when they think they’ve unintentionally enabled an agenda they’re staunchly against, they’ll whine like hell – and retaliate for it later.
Press members around the country should be ashamed of these findings…assuming humility is something such folks possess.
The establishment media flogs itself over Iraq now only to serve The Narrative™. If the establishment media was truly concerned about complictly enabling a political agenda, we would be seeing a lot more navel-gazing over the Rasmussen poll showing that a plurality of the public believes that most reporters will try to help Barack Obama and that more Democrats believe this than believe the press will try to help past media darling John McCain. And a lot more navel-gazing than was prompted by the series of media confessions that the establishment media is fawning over Obama. Instead, you tend to get journos wondering whether the fawning hurts Obama.
