Survey: media biased, inaccurate and immoral

September 27, 2011 By

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press put out the results of their latest poll on public opinion of the media. And the results weren’t too good. But, on the other hand, they weren’t all bad. Here’s how Pew put it:

Negative opinions about the performance of news organizations now equal or surpass all-time highs on nine of 12 core measures the Pew Research Center has been tracking since 1985. However, these bleak findings are put into some perspective by the fact that news organizations are more trusted sources of information than are many other institutions, including government and business.

Further, people rate the performance of the news organizations they rely on much more positively than they rate the performance of news organizations generally.

But the results themselves were kind of hard to read, for those of us that defend the American model of journalism. Fully two-thirds of respondents say news stories often are inaccurate, 77 percent say news organizations tend to favor one side, and 80 percent say news organizations are often influenced by powerful people and organizations.

One of the things I find interesting about this study is the relative lack of media interest in it. Certainly those blogs that cover the media — such as Mediabistro — covered it. But I’ve noticed that some in the media don’t take as kindly to stories alleging problems in the media as they do stories alleging problems in the military or business world or, for that matter, in the religious sectors.

One noticeable exception was Politico, which ran with the story. Here’s how they put it:

Record numbers of Americans consider the news media to be “immoral,” “inaccurate,” and “biased,” a new poll says.

A plurality of Americans, 42 percent, said that the press was “immoral,” compared with 38 percent who viewed the news media as “moral” — a record high according to an annual Pew Research poll on the media.

Americans were evenly divided over whether the media helps “protect democracy” or “hurts democracy,” with 42 percent for each. The number of people who thought the media hurts democracy was at another record high — in the mid-1980s, about twice as many said that news organizations protect democracy.

Americans also believe that news stories are often inaccurate — with 66 percent giving such a response, compared with 34 percent in 1985. Only 25 percent of those surveyed think news organizations “get the facts straight.”

Now, Pew emphasized that Americans have negative views of all sources of information. But still, these numbers aren’t great, are they?

Over at the Washington Post, media critic Erik Wemple dismissed the Pew report as no big deal. Since people tend to trust the media outlets they use over the ones they don’t, he figured it just showed that news consumers were savvy.

What do you think? Do these numbers trouble you or are they no big deal? If people are happy with their news sources — CNN and Fox News being the top television outlets people go to — does it matter if they have negative views of other outlets?

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Filed Under: Academia, Journalism
  • ceemac

    This is a dramatic shift over the last 40 yrs.

    I can remember when journalists were heroes. Think Woodward and Bernstein.

    And when Sunday nights in the 70′s meant 60 Minutes was “must see TV” before that term existed.

  • Daniel

    I post the following with tongue gently planted in cheek. I have been misquoted in my own small town newspaper. On the perception that news stories often are inaccurate, many readers have had the experience before they got out of middle school of finding an inaccurate news story, perhaps of being misquoted in an interview. Gramattical, spelling, or substantive mistakes are common in newspapers. Savvy consumers may wonder why these violations of rules our English teachers taught us occur. One suggestion is that the papers hire grammar and logic teachers to write the papers. Careful observation of rules of attribution would be a big help.
    I would have thought that if those reporters who interviewed me intended to get the story right, he and she would have written my statements down correctly, and then double-checked them when the story went to press. The idea that readers of news have a savvy acquaintance with the ins and outs of journalism gives me pause. I find some hope in the idea that knowledgeable consumers know how to judge a story. Wise fact-checking skills and deliberate care in coming to conclusions are cooperative efforts between good journalists and news consumers. A good appreciation of these responsibilities at both ends of the pen would protect the foundations of a healthy republic.

  • Dave

    If people are happy with their news sources — CNN and Fox News being the top television outlets people go to — does it matter if they have negative views of other outlets?

    This situation means we already have the audience for European style journalism, even though American journalists are trying to perform American style journalism.

    Perhaps first-take accuracy is less important in the Internet age, where corrections can be distributed within a few hours of finding the error. Of course it should still be a journalistic goal.

  • http://holyprotection.wordpress.com Pete

    Wemple’s understanding seems to imply that everyone taking the survey voted not with the media they were familiar with and knew well, but rather the media they disliked and–one would think–probably rarely looked at deeply, anyway. With such a perspective, it would follow that the surveyed either think the term “media” commonly refers to the “media not on my side”–and thus used this sample in their assessments and votes of poor quality, or that the surveyed are simply liars and idiots, not knowing how to truthfully take a simple survey, and possibly not saavy at all. Hmmm.

    Somehow, however, it appears that the media and the people are linked, molding each other into what exists today; a culture filled with immorality, inaccuracy, and bias.

  • Jerry

    The numbers do both me but I think the negative numbers are reflective of the job being done by the media.

    I think many people have had or heard about experiences like mine. For example, a friend prepared a press release about a project but reporter mangled the release into something quite different.

    In earlier times, we could tell something about media bias by which set of crowd estimates were reported. I remember noting that one of the TV networks reported the cops estimates, one the protesters estimates and one both estimates. And I don’t remember any reporting about how crowd size should be estimated.

    And I remember a protest I was in where a large crowd was marching to Arlington Cemetery and a phalanx of cops were blocking it. We were being followed by a camera on a media van. The issue was resolved peacefully and we were allowed to demonstrate outside the cemetery itself but just before the entrance. This incident, even though it involved a large number of people, was ignored in the news. Guess what was reported? Yup, a small incident involving a handful of people.

    So this has been a problem for considerable time. Even before my time, yellow journalism was well known.

    Today I look for bias by seeing how Fox reports on President Obama versus how MSNBC does. Political bias is not even subtle, it’s very blatant.

    And, of course, GR has reinforced my view that most of the media is bad by offering example after example of how not to cover religion.

  • Daniel

    I forgot to say that I’m not sure of the aptnes of my comparison between the quality of small town newspapers and that of the big boys.

  • Mari

    Part of the fun of reading the Washington Post is finding all the errors. This week’s paper had something where the end of the sentence was completely missing. When it comes to local geography the WP can be bad too. So in experiencing the Post’s mistakes and flub-ups on a regular basis it is hard for me to say they are accurate, regardless of how small the errors were.

    Where are the editors? Do they actually edit or opine?

  • Bennett

    I’d say this is both a good and bad thing. Good, in that it reflects that citizens aren’t oblivious, bad in the more obvious sense–there’s a problem with the media. Of course, people also consistently say, as the article mentions, that they distrust business, government, etc.

    The bigger problem is, if the vast majority of us disapprove of the job being done by these institutions, why don’t we demand better? Would it just cut too severely into our sitting-around time? It’s a sad commentary that people realize they can’t trust the government, business, or media, and yet they go right on serving them. Would you stay with your wife, if you were 66% certain she was faithless?

  • Jeffrey

    Given that bias generally translates into “they don’t agree with me” which is coupled with the conservative rhetorical drumbeat of “the media is biased” it isn pretty easy to dismiss this data as political and less real.

  • Daniel

    Where does it even say that bias was measured in the article? I do not see a direct correlation between bias and inaccuracy. Get the dates wrong, get the names wrong, get the quotes wrong, fail to provide context, misattribute quotes, or fail to identify place names correctly, and the result isn’t bias, but inaccuracy! The cause of the errors could have been bias, but no one has said this, and I was hoping that people of any given bias could at least agree on the topic under discussion, even if they do draw differing conclusions. Errors like this are the result of sloppy journalism, and if you want to argue that sloppy journalism is caused by bias, doesn’t that mean that the ideology of any stripe tarnishes the ability to fact-check? We must resist the terrorist tendency of our own hearts — the desire for quick and indiscriminate retaliation.

  • sari

    The survey reflects public sentiment pretty well, I think, and with good reason. Whether it’s editors who pander to public opinion in order to increase market share or journalists who lack the knowledge base and requisite skills to research and report accurately on a topic, few media outlets can be trusted to present accurate, impartial news. The result is that many people refuse to go on record for fear of misattribution or misrepresentation, especially when interviewed on topics like religion.

    My family was once featured in a large article about a huge corporate relo from one state to another. The interview came about when I contacted a reporter (not religion) who criticized Jewish leaders in print for not returning calls he had made “late Friday afternoon”. He had wanted input on congregants’ feelings about being relo’d from an area with communal supports to an area with virtually no Jewish presence. Had he done his homework, he would have realized that most rabbis had already turned off their ringers for the Sabbath. We talked, he apologized, admitted his ignorance, and said he was looking for people like us to interview. We agreed, but only on condition that he’d tape the interview to ensure that what we said was what we actually said. It was a nice article, front page in both states (sister papers), and he got his facts right.

    Fast forward to a recent article about changes in a major Jewish institution without a) researching the institution’s history and b) soliciting opinions on these changes from any but the most liberal denominations. Rather than learn, the individual chose not to answer email and when phoned, was openly hostile (raised voice). The managing editor seemed ok with this behavior. A reporter who cannot be bothered to check facts or provide context should find another line of work.

    At this point, our local subscription costs less than the coupons it provides. When that changes, we’ll de-subscribe. We’ve completely given up on TV news.

  • Martha

    “Since people tend to trust the media outlets they use over the ones they don’t, he figured it just showed that news consumers were savvy.”

    Saying people trust the newspapers they read more than they trust the newspapers they don’t read is like saying that people who vote Republican (or Democrat) like the Republican (or Democratic) Party better than they like the Democratic (or Republican) party. It tells you preference, it doesn’t tell you if that preference is based on good reasons, inertia, tradition, or “My local representative brings home plenty of pork for the constituency”.

    I would hope that the media would be more interested in how they are viewed than just to shrug such a report off with “Eh, our readers are smart, and how we know they’re smart is that they read us!”

  • Passing By
  • http://!)! Passing By

    Tablets are great, but to comment, thanks be for a real keyboard.

    What I wanted to say is yes, I would be one of those people giving bad grades to current media practice and could write a small book from the consumer’s POV on the subject (including like Jerry, personal experiences).

    But that’s not what I want to say.

    It seems to me that if journalism wants to be a “profession”, with public respect and support, some sort of internal quality assurance/peer review needs to be established. GetReligion seems to be doing that informally for religion reporting. Judging from primary source responses in the comments, journalists seem to be paying attention.

    I meant to say this under the Rocco post, but another function you serve is to undercut the natural cynicism of people like me, partly through informed criticism of bad articles. The positive reviews (read, even if commenting is light) are also helpful. I find the process and the content hopeful. It’s been a particular pleasure to learn about good journalists. Rocco I’ve read for years, but now I know about people like Ann Rodgers and Bob Smietana.

    By the way, could we dump that adolescent “grades” thing? Along with a bunch of other cliches :-)

    Ok, I had to get in one of consumerist digs.

  • Dan Crawford

    The news bureaus of every television network, the NY Times, the Washington Post, and newspapers of every ideological stripe have been taken over by the Ministries of Propaganda and it has become difficult to discern the truth among the lies.

  • Daniel

    What I meant by Get the dates wrong, get the names wrong, get the quotes wrong, fail to provide context, misattribute quotes, or fail to identify place names correctly, and the result is not bias, but inaccuracy, is as follows:
    above you all have expressed so well. Combining the thought together, first of all American journalism is founded upon a methodology best articulated by the German historian Leopold von Ranke. It is a scientific objective worldview that sees the task of the journalist (like the historian) to report what actually happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen). In this school of writing, the journalist must set aside his own views and present a story on its own terms, to establish what the facts are and let the facts dictate the story.
    Somehow, however, it appears that the media and the people are linked, molding each other into what exists today; a culture filled with immorality, inaccuracy, and bias.
    whether it’s editors who pander to public opinion in order to increase market share or journalists who lack the knowledge base and requisite skills to research and report accurately on a topic, few media outlets can be trusted to present accurate, impartial news. The result is that many people refuse to go on record for fear of misattribution or misrepresentation, especially when interviewed on topics like religion.
    I think all of this is said so well that I feel very blessed to have read all of it; and benefited from its incisiveness. I’m glad we can do something, anything, to reward good journalism and to commend its strength, characteristics, and the nature of its benefits. At least defining good journalism’s profile, as you have helped me to do in my own mind, is one step toward recognizing it when it occurs, calling for it in the abstract, and in commending it and rewarding it when specific examples occur. I thank on my part all who participate on this blog.