Media’s trouble
This morning in the Wall Street Journal, the editorial board repeats the outcome of a recent poll, the results of which no one reading this blog will find surprising;
The presidential primaries are finally over. We know how the candidates fared with voters but what did voters think of the news media that covered the race? If objectivity and balance are the goals, not well at all. A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds that 68% of Americans “believe most reporters try to help the candidate that they want to win.” Not surprisingly, a majority of voters also thought that Barack Obama received the most favorable coverage during the primary season.
The belief that news reporters are often news twisters isn’t confined to cranky ideologues. It cuts across all racial, gender and income groups. A full 82% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats and 69% of independents believe reporters try to give an assist to the candidate they prefer. Only 17% of all voters believe most reporters actually attempt to deliver unbiased coverage.
Barack Obama is likely to be the beneficiary of this favoritism come the fall campaign. During the primaries 54% of those surveyed by Rasmussen thought he received the most favorable coverage vs. 22% for John McCain and only 14% for Hillary Clinton.
This fall, a full 44% of voters think the media will try to make Senator Obama look good while only 13% think most reporters will tilt in Senator McCain’s direction.
Now, I grew up during a time when Americans depended upon the media to tell them what was happening in their worlds, to inform us on events without “spin” – a term we never used, or suspected from our media. There was a time I wanted to be a journalist, but my time working in an Army Public Affairs Office in Panama during Jimmy Carter’s administration during the treaty negotiations disabused me of that notion. Many of the media types only wanted certain pictures, certain stories…they weren’t interested in telling the unvarnished story.
The Washington Post’s stock has fallen over 30 percent in the last four years, the New York Times’ stock has fallen nearly 50% in the last year and is it any wonder? If Americans wanted fiction, they’d go to the book store. Newsroom editors have decided what they should tell Americans about politicians for years and it hasn’t worked for them – you’d think they’d have learned by now. Instead of trying to clean up their newsrooms, they’ve decided instead to set up “citizen journalists” to tear down our cottage industry of truth telling. Webloggin‘s Terry Trippany writes that Associated Press has taken action against a Leftist website for the same thing we do everyday – cutting, pasting and linking. Little Green Footballs reported last night that the New York Times fingered the Right’s bloggers for spreading the story about Michelle Obama’s “Whiteys” lie (even though it was clearly a Leftist blog that was propagating that lie.
I guess going after everyone else is easier than cleaning up the way they do business.
