Zogby Poll: Voters Believe Media Bias is Very Real

[GaryC 7]

Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet/Zogby Poll shows American voters are skeptical political motivation may be behind blogs run by mainstream news organizations

The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides, a recent IPDI/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

The Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet is based at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

Nearly two-thirds of those online respondents who detected bias in the media (64%) said the media leans left, while slightly more than a quarter of respondents (28%) said they see a conservative bias on their TV sets and in their column inches. The survey, which focuses on perceptions of the “old” and “new” media, will be released today at the PoliticsOnline Conference 2007 at GWU. It is also featured in the March issue of Zogby’s Real America newsletter, now available on www.zogby.com.

Fritz Wenzel, Zogby’s Director of Communications, will also discuss with conference–goers the results of the first interactive survey to include video clips from presidential candidates. The video poll is the latest step in Zogby’s cutting–edge leadership in online polling, and revealed important respondent sentiment toward the candidates after viewing clips online of recent speeches and interviews. Zogby International’s Jonathan Zogby, Director of Domestic Business Development, has also published an article in the conference magazine about the emergence of Internet polling as an important survey research tool, particularly in light of the increasing difficulty of telephone polling.

The IPDI PoliticsOnline conference is one of the most important annual national conferences focusing on how the Internet has affected American politics.

While 97% of Republicans surveyed said the media are liberal, two-thirds of political independents feel the same, but fewer than one in four independents (23%) said they saw a conservative bias. Democrats, while much more likely to perceive a conservative bias than other groups, were not nearly as sure the media was against them as were the Republicans. While Republicans were unified in their perception of a left-wing media, just two-thirds of Democrats were certain the media skewed right – and 17% said the bias favored the left.

The Zogby Interactive survey of 1,757 likely voters nationwide was conducted Feb. 20-26, 2007, and has a margin of error of +/- 2.4 percentage points.

As the influence of blogs has risen, mainstream news organizations have attempted to get in on the action by creating their own blogs to counter those run by private citizens and those not in the news business. But American voters remain skeptical of major news outlets diving in to the blog pool – 26% speculated that the reason news organizations are placing blogs on their Web sites is that “blogs give news organizations a chance to promote a political agenda they could not promote in their regular broadcasts, cablecasts, or publications.”

This month’s Zogby’s Real America newsletter also explores Americans’ divided views on how to fix the U.S. health care system – how the nation’s health care compares to other counties, whether Americans should seek a radical change and what type of health care system would benefit the most Americans.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Gary, since when did you let popular opinion sway yours?

[MPGGPM 0]

Overall, there are many more stations on the air that swing to the left.......I agree with that result...........but that being said, I don't think anyone who has ever watched FOX news or been to their website often enough , can say that they aren't just as biased to the "right"......as stations like CNN are to the "left".

Personally, I'm pretty turned off by it all. I just want the news.....and I just want it to be objective.

I don't like trying to be manipulated by particular outlets.

The news shouldn't be used as a way to gain political support for whatever party that particular network supports.................unfortunately, these days...................they are. And it seems to be getting worse.

[Fuzzness 2]

I don't think they are biased at all, except maybe fox. they have to report the news as it is.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Following the reasoning in the global warming threads - if you have preconceptions going into something, you're going to see exactly what you want to...

Confirmation Bias

Interestingly - Reporters Without Borders now ranks the USA 53rd in terms of "press freedoms"

Press Freedom Index 2006

Edited March 23, 2007 by erekose

[Niels Bohr 72]

I don't believe the news. I believe events. Nancy Grace is not news, she gives her opinion on news. Bill O'Reilly is not news, he gives his opinion on news. Many ADD viewers (many Americans if not most), need to have people think for them.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I don't believe the news. I believe events. Nancy Grace is not news, she gives her opinion on news. Bill O'Reilly is not news, he gives his opinion on news. Many ADD viewers (many Americans if not most), need to have people think for them.

I certainly believe that those kinds of commentators blur the boundaries between editorial and actual reporting journalism.

I saw a poster ad for ABC news with Charles Gibson saying "it's one thing to report the news, its another to help you make sense of it". I'm always suspicious of things like that - the assumption that people need to have someone "make sense of the news" for them. Of course, on a diet of generally narrow debate - that's probably depressingly accurate.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Fox news is right. Everything else is left. Yet people still bash Fox.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Fox news is right. Everything else is left. Yet people still bash Fox.

And yet they really aren't that different from the other corporate news channels. Nor is their journalism "better"

[mybackpages 0]

There is not one academic study to support eh idea that tehre is a liberal bias in media. Of course there is liberal media and conservative media, but as a whole the media does not swing left.

Studies tend to show that we seek out the media that is likely to agree with us. One particular study showed the same CNN news clip to 2 control groups. One group - self identified as libera and the other- self identified as conservative. The libs rated the story as having a conservative bias. The conservatives rated te story as having a liberal bias. SAME Story.

It just tickles me pink when someone calls CNN left. Democracy Now, The Nation, now that is left.

[Ban Hammer 13,625]

There is not one academic study to support eh idea that tehre is a liberal bias in media. Of course there is liberal media and conservative media, but as a whole the media does not swing left.

Studies tend to show that we seek out the media that is likely to agree with us. One particular study showed the same CNN news clip to 2 control groups. One group - self identified as libera and the other- self identified as conservative. The libs rated the story as having a conservative bias. The conservatives rated te story as having a liberal bias. SAME Story.

It just tickles me pink when someone calls CNN left. Democracy Now, The Nation, now that is left.

yes, there are studies that show liberal bias. but i'm not surprised that some can't find them.

and there are varying degrees of left

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

There are indeed studies that show “liberal bias”, but like the GW issue many of those are politically motivated.

The biggest influence on the mass-media is corporate ownership – far and above the perceived bias by individual journalists. That people look at Fox as some sort of “breath of fresh” air is mystifying as they engage in the same narrow range of debate as the other networks.

[Anna C. 4]

I don't get why the media doesn't admit their respective sides. In Germany it's normal to know which newspaper has a bias for which side. Plus that Op/Eds are so popular in the United States makes it really hard not to show your bias as a journalist - so why the whole pretending of being objective?

(Btw I am a communication scientist, did a lot of research on journalism, and since 30 years research (of others) shows one thing: media is always biased, unless robots write and select the news, people can't switch off their hearts. Rrrr journalists hate the com scientists for that statement.)

Edited March 23, 2007 by Anna C.

[Otto 83]

The media is politically biased? Oww man...you gotta be kidding me.. and here I was believing the old "If they said it, it must be true" saying.... #######!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I don't get why the media doesn't admit their respective sides. In Germany it's normal to know which newspaper has a bias for which side. Plus that Op/Eds are so popular in the United States makes it really hard not to show your bias as a journalist - so why the whole pretending of being objective?

(Btw I am a communication scientist, did a lot of research on journalism, and since 30 years research (of others) shows one thing: media is always biased, unless robots write and select the news, people can't switch off their hearts. Rrrr journalists hate the com scientists for that statement.)

The media debate here has just become another part of the partisan divide.

As far as politcal bias goes - I don't see that as being the main problem, as much as the actual quality of the reporting (that involves not only fact-checking but the selection of what is deemed to be "newsworthy". All of the big networks blur the distinction between traditional journalistic reporting and editorial. It's that editorializing that I think the main accusations of bias stem from, but its always amusing to me that people rally behind particular publications and networks and that claims of “balance†and “fairness†are almost always advertising slogans.

It makes you wonder whether the narrow range of debate we have here is the result of the media not doing its job properly, or that it simply reflects a largely divided public.

Edited March 23, 2007 by erekose