Public Recognizes Liberal Bias in Media

From the conservative Media Research Center:

For the sixth time in a year, a national survey has found many more Americans see a news media bias to the left than to the right, and the latest poll released earlier this month by the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute, discovered “significantly declining percentages of Americans saying they believe all or most of media news reporting,” with MSNBC (at a piddling four percent) and PBS (three percent) the least trusted for accurate reporting. Fox News, at 27 percent, was the most trusted, way ahead of second-best CNN at 14.6 percent. The Fairfield, Connecticut university’s January 8 press release reported: “Just 19.6 percent of those surveyed could say they believe all or most news media reporting. This is down from 27.4 percent in 2003.”

By a three-to-one margin “Americans see news media journalists and broadcasters (45.4 percent to 15.7 percent) as mostly or somewhat liberal over mostly or somewhat conservative,” but for NPR and the New York Times recognition of a liberal tilt is closer to four-to-one.

This, of course, is not a single quirky poll. It’s just the most recent in a long series of polls showing the same thing.

The standard liberal response to this is likely going to be that people have simply bought conservative propaganda, especially from talk radio, about the liberal bias of the media.

But the number of people who recognize a liberal bias far exceeds the audience of talk radio.

And this argument from liberals is, of course, rather demeaning and elitist toward the American people. It’s also a two-edged sword. If people can be so easily manipulated by talk radio, can’t they also be easily manipulated by (say) editorials in the Journal-Sentinel, or the bias of the broadcast networks’ evening newscasts?