[CLUE-Talk] "Liberal" media?

[Kevin Cullis]

Thought this might be of interest to some of you. Not to start another
flame war, but interestting numbers.

Kevin

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> 4) USA Today spiked a poll which documented the public's
perception of liberal bias. As recounted in the July 14
CyberAlert, a survey released over the weekend by the Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press found, that by two-to-one,
Americans believe the media tilt to the left, with even a
plurality of Democrats thinking so.

    But in his 500-word "Media Mix" article on the poll, in
Wednesday's USA Today, Peter Johnson seemed to recite every poll
finding but that one, which was the first time Pew had asked about
whether respondents saw the news media as more conservative or
liberal.

    The July 14 CyberAlert summarized the media bias finding:
"Most Americans (53%) believe that news organizations are
politically biased, while just 29% say they are careful to remove
bias from their reports. When it comes to describing the press,
twice as many say news organizations are 'liberal' (51%) than
'conservative,'" a just-released Pew Research Center for the
People and the Press survey discovered. Even a plurality of
Democrats see a liberal slant over a conservative one by 41 to 33
percent. For the CyberAlert with an excerpt from the Pew rundown:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2003/cyb20030714.asp#4

    For Pew's full report on its results:
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=188
    
    The Boston Globe's Mark Jurkowitz managed to highlight, in a
Monday story, the bias perception discovery: "The poll reveals
that the long-smoldering issue of liberal media bias is alive and
kicking, with 51 percent of the public subscribing to that belief,
compared to only 26 percent who see the press as conservative."

    But that didn't make it into the July 16 USA today story
headlined, "Public unsettled by media consolidation, poll shows."

    An excerpt from the findings Johnson found more interesting:

In 1985, a Pew Research Center poll found that 53% of people
thought that the news media were "often influenced by powerful
people and organizations."

When asked that same question last month, that number had risen to
71% -- a sign that Pew director Andrew Kohut views as rising
anxiety about the news media in the hands of huge
conglomerates.... 

Public fear that big media outfits are getting even bigger might
be behind another Pew finding released this week: Opposition to a
Federal Communications Commission decision to loosen media
cross-ownership restrictions has increased sharply since February
as more Americans learned about the plan....

After the war with Iraq, the poll found that 70% of Americans like
it when news organizations take a "strong pro-American point of
view." But that doesn't mean they want patriotism to color
reporting on the war on terrorism: 64% want neutral coverage,
compared with 29% who want pro-American coverage.

The poll found that Americans are increasingly turning to cable's
Fox News Channel for their news. More than one in five (22%) get
most of their news from Fox, compared with 16% in January 2002.
The poll found that Fox's audience is decidedly more Republican
and conservative than audiences for CNN and the broadcast
networks.

Fox's success may signal the dawn of a new kind of "news system at
the network level, where you have market differentiation by
political affiliation," says New York University journalism
chairman Jay Rosen....

But Bill Shine, Fox News executive producer, views the poll
another way. "It shows right off the bat that people like what
we're doing." The poll also found that Fox has a higher percentage
of independents than CNN (30% to 28%) and 24% of its audience is
Democrat. "I think it shows we have a good mix."

    END of Excerpt

    For Johnson's July 16 story in its entirety:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/columnist/mediamix/2003-07-15-media-mixx_x.htm

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