US Public sees media as biased
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.
The only surprise for me is that so many people apparently still trust the news media, and I can see why internet users would be more likely to feel that it's biased. After all, people on the internet tend to both access media outside the US, and to access the on-line Op-Ed industry that are political blogs.
Of course, the real issue is determining what the media bias actually is. Right-wingers claim liberal bias, and left-wingers claim some combination of corporate or government right-wing leanings, and as this poll is worded, both sides can use it to reinforce their beliefs. People only ever point out bias in articles they disagree with, never when they reinforce their own opinions.
Personally, I feel that all media is biased. Which way depends on the source and the issue. It's one of the reasons I try to read my news and opinions from a wide variety of sources, though of course I'm forced to admit that I enjoy reading people who agree with me a lot more.
