Why Do They Hate Us?

Editor and Publisher asks the question. But they're not so sure what to do with the answers.

As in most previous surveys of journalists, a high number called themselves politically "moderate" (49%), with 31% describing themselves as "liberal" and just 9% as "conservative."

Even if those labels were accurate, that's massively skewed compared to the public. What one might ask is, how many of those self-described moderates voted Democrat, and how many Republican? As Hugh Hewitt found, they are strangely reluctant to answer.

Forty-eight percent of the public but only 11% of journalists said news organizations were "often inaccurate." When serious mistakes are made, 74% of the journalists said news organizations quickly report the error, but only 30% of the public said they do. In the public, 24% said news organizations try to ignore errors and 41% said they try to cover them up.

"That was the most surprising thing, the public perception that journalists don't correct errors," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Center, told E&P. "We focused on the serious errors and you have journalists believing they correct them. You'd like to know what the truth is."

Yes, we'd like to know what the truth is. But we don't trust you to tell us. Two-thirds of the public thinks that news organizations ignore or cover-up their errors; three-quarters of journalists believe that their errors are quickly corrected.

That's not a gap, that's a chasm. A yawning gulf:

"This study reveals a worrisome divide between the public's view of journalism and journalists' own views of their work," Geneva Overholser, a former Washington Post ombudsman and the author of a new book on the press, said in a statement. "If journalists do indeed believe that what they do is valuable, fair, and ethically sound, it's past time they began to put that case more effectively to the public."

In other words, if the public think we are worthless, unfair and unethical, they just need to be educated. Shame about those circulation figures...

(Via Roger L. Simon)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:02 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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