Poll Shows Most Americans Think News Coverage Politically Slanted

Most Americans think news coverage is biased, a new poll has found.

The Gallup/Knight Foundation survey showed 86% of Americans say the media is biased, with 49% of respondents saying there’s “a great deal” of political bias in news coverage, and 37% asserting there’s “a fair amount” of bias.

The findings also showed 69% respondents were more worried about the news sources of other people, while 29% were concerned about the bias in their own news outlet picks.

More than half, 56%, said there was political bias in the news source that they relied on the most, the poll found.

Trusting the media is a partisan issue, the poll found; 71% of Republicans view the media “very” or “somewhat” unfavorably, compared with 22% of Democrats and 52% of independents who said the same.

In other findings, the survey showed:

• 70% of Democrats say attacks on the media are unwarranted; 61% of Republicans think media attacks are justified.
• 73% of respondents said bias is a “major problem.” That compared with 65% who said the same in 2017.
• 54% said inaccuracies were intentional because reporters were misrepresenting facts; 28% believed reporters made up facts entirely.
• 89% said that news organizations they distrust are trying to push a certain agenda; 12% said the organizations they distrust failed to report the facts accurately despite an honest attempt to do so.
• 78% said misinformation online is a “major problem,” and 73% said they wanted internet companies to do something to curb the spread of misinformation.

The survey’s margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point.

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