Posted on 05/25/2004 10:37:47 AM PDT by pookie18
CNN and USA Today spiked how a new poll documented how the biggest and most influential national media outlets are packed with liberals. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey, released on Sunday, of reporters, editors, producers and executives for national media outlets, found five times more identify themselves as liberal, 34 percent, than conservative, a mere 7 percent, with another 54 percent claiming to be moderate.
But in citing the poll on Monday’s Inside Politics, Judy Woodruff ignored the finding about the ideologies of journalists and in a 400-word USA Today article, which was accompanied by a table with some results, Peter Johnson didn’t find it worth mentioning either, though he found space to summarize a left-wing group’s study which claimed that NPR is conservative because it interviews more Republicans than Democrats and a lot of white men -- as if white men can’t be liberal.
Monday’s Washington Post story by Howard Kurtz recited the liberal v conservative percent of journalists, as did Mark Jurkowitz’s Boston Globe story. On his FNC show Monday night, Brit Hume devoted a “Grapevine” item to the ideology of the journalists and he focused a panel segment on the subject.
But that wasn’t Judy Woodruff’s interest, the MRC’s Ken Shepherd noticed. On the May 24 Inside Politics, she asserted: “Television journalists working for local and national media outlets appear somewhat divided about how reporters are treating the Bush administration. In a new Pew Research Center poll, more than half of the national journalists say White House coverage has not been critical enough, while only one-fourth of local reporters agree. Only eight percent of national journalists say the press has been too critical of the President, while 25 percent of local reporters say the media have been too critical.”
“Survey: Profit pressures worry most journalists,” read the headline over Peter Johnson’s “Media Mix” article in Monday’s USA Today in which he skipped over the documented ideological skew. An excerpt:
Journalists are increasingly concerned that bottom-line pressure is hurting the quality of news coverage, says a new Pew study of 547 national and local reporters, editors and executives.
Though journalists at national print and electronic news organizations have a gloomier view of the business than their local brethren, both groups indicate rising concern about the effect of profit pressures. Concern rose from 41% of national journalists in 1995 to 49% in 1999 and 66% polled in March. Local: 33% in 1995, 46% in 1999 and 57% now.
One dissent came from executives at national news organizations: 57% feel increased profit pressures are ''mostly just changing the way news organizations do things'' rather than undermining quality....
The poll found that journalists believe the media pay too little attention to complex issues and show increasingly timid coverage: 55% of national journalists and 37% of local ones say coverage of President Bush, for example, has not been critical enough.
Although journalists are concerned over factual errors in news reports, there is no indication that recent reporter scandals at The New York Times and USA TODAY are dimming journalists' views of their profession....
Cynicism -- a constant knock against the press -- is waning, journalists say. Just 37% of national reporters and 40% of local ones view the press as too cynical, down from 53% and 51%, respectively, in 1999. Among Internet journalists, just 24% view the press as too cynical, down from 48% five years ago....
END of Excerpt
The second of Johnson’s two “Media Mix” items: “NPR: Going 'Right'?” That article began: “National Public Radio, which conservatives have long labeled 'liberal,' relies on largely the same range of sources that dominate mainstream commercial news, airing more Republican than Democratic voices, and with male sources outnumbering female sources by nearly four to one.”
For both of Johnson’s May 24 stories: www.usatoday.com
For the May 24 CyberAlert item with more findings from the Pew poll, along with links to the full rundown of the survey: www.mediaresearch.org
Tell us something WE don't know....
In other news, only 31% of burglars support the idea of locks, and only 24% of drunkards support laws about public intoxication!
There is a well established correlation between people who tilt to the left and the medical condition known as "rectal-cranial inversion".
The Pew study was posted over at DU under the headline "Journalists feel that coverage of the Bush Admin is not critical enough" or something to that effect. So all the DUer's were praising the study and agreeing with it. It was only after about 100 or so comments somebody actually read the rest of the article which showed the percentages of liberal journalists was way higher than conservatives. Then they all did a complete 180 and trashed the poll as a Rightwing/corporate/propaganda/(insert your own invective here). The groupthink over there is amazing, kind of how they would just airbrush people out of pictures in the old Soviet Union and pretend it never existed.
They knew the truth, and the truth shall make them flee.......
Both CNN and USA Today deal in fiction. They can't be put in the position of telling the truth and thereby spoiling their record.
As long as the #1 cable news network (Fox News) doesn't spike the poll results then those lesser outlets don't matter as much. CNN's strategy of taking their lead from the DNC and its primary house organ, the New York Times, will only help it fade faster. Just like the dying broadcast networks.
Aha, Dr. Bluto, the HUA syndrome...
Great illustration!!!
They write stories based on the b-roll of other organizations! Wow.
That is extremely unprofessional...
Duh
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