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.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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