More than three-fourths of Americans (77%) say that news organizations tend to favor one side when presenting the news on political and social issues, while only 22% say the media deals fairly with all sides, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Tuesday.
This finding is a slight decrease from the last time Pew asked the question in early 2020, during the final year of President-elect Donald Trump's first term, when 79% of respondents said the same thing. That was the highest percentage since Pew started asking the question almost 40 years ago.
When the question was first asked in 1985, a substantially lower percentage answered that news organizations were biased at 53%.
Other results from the poll show:
* In the latest survey, 88% of Republicans said that the media tends to favor one side of the political divide when presenting the news on political and social issues, compared with 67% of Democrats.
* The poll also showed that 74% of respondents said criticism from news organizations prevents political leaders from doing things that should not be done, while 24% said this type of scrutiny keeps leaders from doing their job.
* Responses to this question were also varied according to political affiliation, with 81% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying media criticism helps keep political leaders from doing things they should not, compared to 67% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who said the same thing.
The survey was carried out from Sept. 16 to 22 among 9,680 American adults. The margin of error is 1.3 percentage points.