Bias and too critical of America:
Taking this one poll alone, there are no huge surprises here, I myself have mentioned their obvious bias, I have shown other polls showing that the majority of Americans feel that most of the MSM is liberally biased (That one was Rasmussen on July 13, 2007)
The most recent example of that bias was the NYT/CBS poll showing America's support for the war inching up, the NYT, being biased, did not run those results until they had it redone, because they did not "believe" or like the results of the first one, but the results stayed the same.
Later news, MSNBC, brought us a list of what party our journalists donate to the most often, that was surprising to say the least, at least to some.
So what about this most recent one from Pew? You can see the whole thing here for yourself, but what caught my attention besides the fact that many see that our media is uncaring, they see bias (no surprise, like I said), inaccuracy (I will show a few examples of THAT below) but they also see that our media is too critical of America.
The internet news audience is particularly likely to criticize news organizations for their lack of empathy, their failure to "stand up for America," and political bias. Roughly two-thirds (68%) of those who get most of their news from the internet say that news organizations do not care about the people they report on, and 53% believe that news organizations are too critical of America. By comparison, smaller percentages of the general public fault the press for not caring about people they report on (53%), and being too critical of America (43%).
Keep your eyes on the breakdown of that opinion between Republicans and Democrats.
The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted July 25-29 among 1,503 adults, finds a continuing pattern of deep partisan differences in public views of news organizations and their performance. Far more than twice as many Republicans as Democrats say news organizations are too critical of America (63% vs. 23%), and there is virtually no measure of press values or performance on which there is not a substantial gap in the views of partisans.
I have called the Democrats the "Hate America" crowd, quite often the "Blame America First" crowd, or anti-America.
So what we have when we combine all of the most recent polls is that our media is liberally biased (Rasmussen), our liberal reporters overwhelmingly show their bias in how they report as well as who they contribute to, and that only 23% percent of Democrats think our media is too critical of America.
That does make sense, because the Democrats are always the first to blame America for anything that happens in the world and they are the loudest in the media to criticize America themselves.
Inaccurate:
More broadly, the new survey underscores the fundamental change in basic attitudes about the news media that has occurred since the mid-1980s. In the initial Times Mirror polling on the press in 1985, the public faulted news organizations for many of its practices: most people said that news organizations "try to cover up their mistakes," while pluralities said they "don't care about the people they report on," and were politically biased.
But in the past decade, these criticisms have come to encompass broader indictments of the accuracy of news reporting, news organizations' impact on democracy and, to some degree, their morality. In 1985, most Americans (55%) said news organizations get the facts straight. Since the late 1990s, consistent majorities – including 53% in the current survey – have expressed the belief that news stories are often inaccurate. As a consequence, the believability ratings for individual news organizations are lower today than they were in the 1980s and 1990s.
Recent examples of this is found in the latest hoopla about TNR with their diarist, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and the stories he related about Iraq that have been proven to be false, and TNR still has not come out with an apology, and is still trying to cover up their journalist malpractice, for a lack of a better word.
But TNR aside, we have other recent examples.
One being the Associated Press and their reporting about 20 beheaded bodies being found, only, ooooops... there were no beheaded bodies.
Now to give credit where it is due, Reuters, who followed along in reporting the story, DID issue a correction, but of course, without the same fanfare that the original story received.
Bob Owens via Pajamas Media has an update showing that without the same fanfare that they reported the rumors that turned out to be false, they finally issued their not so noticed correction.
Ultimately, the Associated Press and Reuters published stories —far less prominently than the initial beheading stories— admitting that their prior claims of a mass beheading were without merit, with Reuters adding:Verifying reports in Iraq is very hard for journalists, who have been systematically targeted by different militant groups and rely extensively on local sources for information.
Paris-based press freedom advocates Reporters Without Borders estimate that over 180 journalists and media assistants have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, making Iraq the most dangerous place in the world to report.
Reuters is absolutely correct: reporting in Iraq is very dangerous work, and insurgent groups and terrorists do target journalists for assassination.
But it is equally true that insurgent groups and terrorists also use the media to plant false stories, and that media organizations consistently fail to find credible, independent sources to verify alleged atrocities and attacks before presenting an alleged story as fact.
Gateway Pundit brings out another example of media reporting inaccurately, namely the BBC, then again, we have already covered the BBC extensively where they admitted to "consistently deceiving the public".
Much to the apparent surprise of Bennett and Abramsky, two experienced and highly respected corporation bureaucrats, a procession of contrite and nervous producers came forward to ’fess up. The public, it seemed, had been deceived with unnerving consistency, particularly over programmes with phone-in polls and competitions. And on the corporation’s most noble flagship enterprises, too. Comic Relief and Children in Need, for example.
“We just sat there absolutely stunned,” one executive board member told me, “shocked beyond belief. Nobody had any idea that this was going on on such a scale.”
I think the inaccurate part of the Pew poll has been established, although there are many, many more examples.
Quite often we make a point of bringing you the latest news releases from sources such as Centcom because we feel that the military tells the "whole story", not just the good, not just the bad, but we have access to all the daily news releases, good and bad.
Seems the public agrees because from this very Pew poll, more do trust the Military on Iraq than they trust these reporters from our MSM who rely mostly on stringers to get their news.
The deep political divisions in opinions about the press are reflected in views of coverage of the Iraq war. Overall, about four-in-ten Americans (42%) express a great deal or a fair amount of confidence that the press is giving the public an accurate picture of how the Iraq war is going. By comparison, more people (52%) say they are confident that the U.S. military is presenting an accurate picture of the war.
As might be expected, Republicans express little confidence in the accuracy of war coverage. Only about a third of Republicans (34%) say they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence the press is giving an accurate picture of the war. More than twice as many Republicans (76%) have confidence that the U.S. military is accurately portraying the war in Iraq.
By contrast, a solid majority of Democrats (56%) have confidence in the press to give an accurate picture of Iraq, while just 36% express comparable trust in the U.S. military. Nearly a quarter of Democrats (23%) say they have "no confidence at all" in the military to give an accurate account of progress in the war; about the same percentage of Republicans expresses no confidence in the press (26%).
Half of independents say they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the military to give an accurate picture of how the war is going, while nearly as many independents (46%) express little or no confidence in the military. Yet independents have significantly less trust in the press when it comes to war coverage; just 38% are confident the press is giving an accurate picture of war developments, while 60% have little or no confidence in war coverage.
Again it is not surprising that Republicans and Independents do not sow confidence in the media's ability to be accurate and on their reporting about Iraq, but the Democrats would rather trust the media.
As we showed multiple examples of above, the media, according to polls and the breakdown of the political party the contribute to, shows them to be liberally biased, so it only makes sense that the Democrats, being liberal, would rather hear from a biased source than the more accurate reporting from the military.
It goes back to wanting to get your news from a source that agrees with your political philosophy vs wanting to get the truth, whether it matches your ideology or not.
So the next time you hear Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or any Democratic politician quoting from a major newspaper to make their points, take it with a grain of salt, they would rather repeat lies and inaccurate "news items" from a liberally biased source, than tell you the truth because it all about politics and not about what is best for America as they try to claim.
More from Agence France Presse on this latest poll.
Others discussing this, via memeorandum.
Hot Air, Mercury Rising, Scared Monkeys, NewsBusters.org, Brendan Nyhan, IMAO, Blue Crab Boulevard and Prairie Weather
Captain's Quarters, On Deadline, Dyre Portents, The Moderate Voice, Gateway Pundit, and Wizbang
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