Poll: 2 to 1 Plurality of Voters Say Media Favors Democrats

Not like it is a huge surprise to anyone not living in a state of denial but another poll, this one conducted by The Hill, finds that the majority of voters, 68 percent believes there is media bias in the way news outlets report the news and 46 percent believe that bias favors Democrats with only 22 percent believing it favors Republicans.

Other findings:

The picture is not much brighter on the general question of ethics. Fifty-seven percent of voters think of the news media as either somewhat or very unethical, while only 39 percent see them as somewhat or very ethical.

The findings come as the phone-hacking scandal centered upon the now-shuttered British tabloid News of the World continues to make headlines on this side of the Atlantic. The tabloid was owned by the UK arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and senior U.S. politicians, including Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have called for an investigation into the company’s activities here.

While negative views of the media are common among all sectors of the electorate, some intriguing patterns emerge deeper in the poll’s findings.

Self-described centrists and liberals, for example, tend to hold a less unremittingly harsh view than conservatives.

The proportion of moderates who believe the news media generally report on politicians in an appropriate way is, at 33 percent, almost twice as large as the 17 percent of conservatives who take the same view.

At the same time, however, centrists tend to think the news media favor one side in their reporting. Thirty-nine percent of centrists endorse the idea that the media favor Democrats while 19 percent think they favor Republicans.

More at The Hill.

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