Point/Counterpoint: To regain trust, journalists first need to acknowledge their liberal bias
From the column: A 2014 survey by Indiana University found that only 7.1% of journalists called themselves Republicans, but 28.1% self-identified as Democrats. Are most journalists aware of this lopsided worldview among their ranks?
Written By:
Carrie Sheffield | ×
Americans’ trust in the national news media is low and getting worse. Mainstream journalism has lost the respect of much of the public, though soul-searching and changes by the industry could reverse this trend.
A new study by the Media Insight Project and funded by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago found bedrock journalism values are respected less by much of the general public than other competing moral values. For example, the study reported that “people who put more emphasis on authority and loyalty tend to be more skeptical about fundamental journalism principles.” A mere 11% of A
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Americans’ trust in the national news media is low and getting worse. Mainstream journalism has lost the respect of much of the public, though soul-searching and changes by the industry could reverse this trend.
A new study by Media Insight Project funded by The Associated Press and the University of Chicago found bedrock journalism values are respected less by much of the general public than other competing moral values. For example, the study reported that “People who put more emphasis on authority and loyalty tend to be more skeptical about fundamental journalism principles.” A mere 11% of Americans fully support all five of the journalism values tested. The study advises journalists to rethink how they frame their content to better resonate with broader audiences.
Earlier this week, I wrote for GBH News about a study showing little support for the core principles of journalism. Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab has done an exceptionally deep dive into the numbers and has concluded that they don’t say what the study’s authors claim.
Benton’s explanation is that the Media Insight Project took unambiguous support for certain journalistic verities and watered it down by pairing it with findings that showed a more dubious view of the press. Benton writes:
Its top-line finding summarized by a [Washington] Post headline writer as “
Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values” is bogus. Or, at a minimum, unsupported by the methodology in use here. There is no reason to believe, based on this data, that Americans have somehow abandoned the basic values of democratic governance, or that we noble journalists are left to fight the lonely fight for accountability.
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