Nearly three times as many of those polled in a new Gallup survey said they believe the media are “too liberal” than “too conservative.” Gallup's Tuesday press release for the poll, which is earning publicity for how it found that “trust and confidence in the news media is up” from last year, reported: “When asked about the news media's political slant, Americans are much more likely to say they are too liberal (46%) than they are to say they are about right (37%) or too conservative (16%). Those views are consistent with what Gallup has measured since 2001. The percentage of Americans saying the news media are too liberal has ranged between 45% and 48%, and has always been the plurality response. There has been a slight increase in the public's sentiment that the media are too conservative, from 11% in 2001 to 16% today.”
Last year, 48 percent saw the media as “too liberal” compared to 15 percent who thought the media were “too conservative.” Given the plus/minus three percent margin of error, the numbers are essentially unchanged from last September. More results follow.
(The MRC's Rich Noyes just updated our "Media Bias Basics" section with thorough rundowns -- excerpts, graphs and tables for polls going back decades -- of how the media vote, how the public views the media as well as long lists of quotes from journalists admitting and denying liberal bias.)
From the September 27 Gallup press release (which is now accessible, but will likely soon require a paid subscription to access), some more findings:
“Republicans and Democrats Differ in Views of News Media
“These two measures show substantial differences between Republicans and Democrats.
> “About 3 in 10 Republicans (31%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the media, while the vast majority of Republicans (69%) say they have very little or no trust in the media. The results are essentially opposite among Democrats, with 70% expressing a great deal or fair amount confidence in the media and 30% very little or no confidence."
> “Eight in 10 Republicans (81%) say the news media are too liberal, while 15% say they are about right, and just 3% say they are too conservative. Among Democrats, a majority (57%) says the news media are just about right, while the rest are almost equally divided in their description of the news media as too liberal (18%) and too conservative (23%).”
