Saturday, August 11, 2007
Pew Center poll finds U.S. public sees news media as biased, inaccurate, uncaring
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070809/lf_afp/usmedia_070809222839
AFP
US public sees news media as biased, inaccurate, uncaring: poll
Thu Aug 9, 6:30 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - 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.
The Washington-based Pew Research Center describes itself as a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.
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