“Too liberal” or “just about right”?
77% of Republicans perceive the media as “too liberal” according to a recent Gallup poll. 59% of Democrats think the mainstream media coverage is “just about right.” Both groups are correct, from their points of view. Excerpt:
less than half of Americans, regardless of partisanship, have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media. Nearly half of Americans — including over three-quarters of Republicans — perceive the media as too liberal while fewer than one in five say the media are too conservative…Over three-quarters of Republicans perceive the news media as being too liberal. That percentage drops to 43% among independents and only 16% among Democrats…
while Republicans are highly likely to perceive the media as being biased toward the left, Democrats are much less likely to perceive the media as being biased toward the right. Whether or not this reflects reality (i.e., that the media are in reality more Democratic and more liberal in their orientation) is an open question…
Perhaps we can help answer the “open question” for Gallup. In 2004 Beltway journalists preferred the Democratic candidate 12 to 1. Evan Thomas of Newsweek said that the coverage of the Democratic candidate in the MSM was “worth maybe 15 points” in the election results. The question was really not so open after all. (HT: Bruce Kesler)
October 9th, 2007 at 9:15 am
I don’t know why this surprising at all or even why Democrats would dispute it. (The survey question begs the answer with “too liberal” rather than just “liberal, unbiased or conservative”. Big media comes out of big cities that pull for Democrats 10:1. Why would their staffs be any different than the constituencies in which they live and most closely serve? They are liberal just like 90% of the people you might bump into by accident walking down 5th avenue or across the Mall. Our national media is big city media, and big cities are deep blue.