The media is biased and sucks except for my local paper of course

Image by gruntzooki via Flickr

Earlier this month our Michael Salmonowicz took note of a curious tendency in public attitudes about education: parents think that there is a national crisis in education, but they think their own school is great, whether or not it really is.

You can find a comparable tendency in the health care debate: worry that there is a problem nationally, but a great deal of satisfaction with one’s own medical care and doctors and “you’ll take my current overpriced health insurance out of my cold, dead hands.”

So, if we think education and health care is crap nationally, but believe that it’s great in our own lives, it should come as no surprise that Americans feel the same way about the news media.

John Kinsellagh blogged yesterday about the media being the Obama administratoin’s praetorian guard. He’s right: the media has fallen in the eyes of Americans. But it’s fallen in everyone’s eyes. John probably thinks that the media is too biased to the left. But you’ll also find our Allison Kilkenny arguing that the media does a crappy, pro-conservative job in talking about the ongoing health care fisticuffs. And it turns out that this perspective is reflected precisely in the poll John cites from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

The survey the Pew Center conducted found not only that American Republicans think the news is dicks, as Sarah Silverman once memorably argued on her Comedy Central show, but that the media’s national reputation has particularly fallen in the eyes of the most liberal of Democrats as well:

Republicans continue to be highly critical of the news media in nearly all respects. However, much of the growth in negative attitudes toward the news media over the last two years is driven by increasingly unfavorable evaluations by Democrats. On several measures, Democratic criticism of the news media has grown by double-digits since 2007. Today, most Democrats (59%) say that the reports of news organizations are often inaccurate; just 43% said this two years ago. Democrats are also now more likely than they were in 2007 to identify favoritism in the media: Two-thirds (67%) say the press tends to favor one side rather than to treat all sides fairly, up from 54%. And while just a third of Democrats (33%) say news organizations are “too critical of America,” that reflects a 10-point increase since 2007.

But while Democrats hate the news, that doesn’t mean they’re simply tuning out. As you might subsequently imagine, the Pew poll shows that Democrats heart CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times, while Republicans think that Fox News is the bee’s knees:

Democrats hold considerably more positive views than Republicans of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the news operations of the broadcast networks, and their views of National Public Radio are somewhat more favorable than those of Republicans. By contrast, views of Fox News — and to a lesser extent The Wall Street Journal — are more positive among Republicans than Democrats.

Partisan differences in views of Fox News have increased substantially since 2007. Today, a large majority of Republicans view Fox News positively (72%), compared with just 43% of Democrats. In 2007, 73% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats viewed Fox News favorably. Three-quarters (75%) of Democrats assess CNN favorably, while just 44% of Republicans do so, which is little changed from two years ago. MSNBC also rates substantially higher among Democrats (60%) than among Republicans (34%).

Not a shock, right? But I have to wonder if this goes a long way in explaining why Fox News has generated such ratings power. The more Democratic-minded Americans split their ticket between a variety of major outlets, while if you’re a Republican, it’s all Fox all the time.

Meanwhile, your Republican uncle who watches Bill O’Reilly and thinks Bill Keller is the devil and your Democratic grandma who wants Glenn Beck shipped off to Guantanamo Bay probably agree on one thing: the local news is just awesome. The Pew findings sum it up this way:

Favorable opinions of all three have declined since 1985; nonetheless, majorities continue to express favorable opinions of local TV news (73%), the daily newspaper they are most familiar with (65%), and network TV news (64%).

Views of local TV news continue to be less partisan than opinions of other leading news sources. As was the case in 1985, there is very little difference between the views of Republicans (79% favorable) and Democrats (77%); somewhat fewer independents (67%) rate local TV news favorably.

Currently, 65% say they have a favorable impression of the daily newspaper they are most familiar with. Positive opinions of daily papers have decreased by 16 points since 1985, with nearly all the decline (14 points) coming in the past decade. However, unfavorable opinions of newspapers have risen only slightly since 1999 – from 17% to 20%. Since then, the proportion saying they are unable to rate daily newspapers has increased from 4% to 15%.

I think we find a telling factor here in how Americans look at their world: Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals alike see a terrific crisis that is subject to quite a bit of consternation on a national basis. But at home? No problem – everything is peachy. This is one of the more ethereal reasons behind why Congress seems to have more and more unfavorable ratings every year, but levels of incumbency don’t change that much. Americans just can’t connect the national crisis they know exists to the local tranquility they imagine.

As local media dies out in many places, I imagine that the disdain for the media overall will harden. If you don’t have a good local news outlet that you trust, you’ll think the media in general can’t be trusted, and turn to something that confirms your personal beliefs about how terrible the other side is. And with so few Americans relying on online news for local content right now according to the Pew poll, new media outlets with a local news focus might struggle to establish themselves as trustworthy.

But then, what am I talking about? I work for a national media outlet, online, and I’m probably biased, inaccurate, and untrustworthy. Why are you even still reading this?