Just 17% of voters nationwide believe that most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of election campaigns. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that four times as many—68%--believe most reporters try to help the candidate that they want to win.
The perception that reporters are advocates rather than observers is held by 82% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 69% of voters not affiliated with either major party. The skepticism about reporters cuts across income, racial, gender, and age barriers.
The state of the news right now has the experiment in "objective" reporting a failure, assuming that the above results are not directly skewed by confusing news commentary with news reporting.
American media outlets might as well follow the European model, where there is no pretense to objectivity. Fox News perhaps got a jump in that department, though I would argue that Fox's news reporting follows the objective model about as well as any other news organization does it.
News consumers need to either find a brand that they trust on the basis of objectivity (good luck!), ideology (easier, but dangerous). Or, alternatively, weight their news consumption according to the reputation of the particular reporters.
There's a potential project. A database that grades news reporters according to their use of editorial judgment in news stories. Shake in your boots, Elisabeth Bumiller.
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