The Media Research Center released a poll it conducted this week claiming that, among other things “7 in 10 (69%) voters do not believe the news media are honest and truthful” and “8 in 10 (78%) of voters believe the news coverage of the presidential campaign was biased.”
Curiously, the full poll results weren’t provided in the NewsBusters article announcing the poll. A link for that is buried in the article at the MRC’s “news” division, CNSNews.com, touting the poll. And that’s where we find a bit of bias in the poll itself: The detail of sampling by region shows that just 16.9 of respondents were from the Northeast, while 24.6 percent were from the Midwest, 21.9 from the West and a whopping 36.6 percent were from the South. That seems a bit skewed.
The full results also show that respondents were questioned about “the media” or “the news media” in the broadest possible sense. This means respondents were responding not just to the MRC’s favorite (and conveniently narrow for research purposes) target, the three main broadcast networks, but to cable news and websites as well — including the MRC’s own CNS.
While the MRC is interested in promoting only the poll results that further its anti-media agenda — i.e., “nearly a 3-to-1 majority believing the media were for Clinton (59%)” — it also found that 21 percent of respondents thought the media was biased in favor of Trump.
And while Brent Bozell rants about the “institutional bias at major media networks” — even though, again, the poll he paid for never asked about that specifically — and insisted that “The public has rejected this institution as being either objective or truthful,” he must apply those results to his own “news” operation, CNS.
As we’ve documented, CNS’ election coverage was egregiously biased, with its reporters pouncing on every alleged Hillary Clinton scandal while playing stenographer for Trump, uncritically transcribing his speeches and statements.
If the public has rejected the media, that means it has also rejected Bozell’s own “news” operation. You’d think Bozell would be concerned enough about that to do something about it — after all, it’s what the MRC presents as the ideal website.
One last note: The press-release description of the MRC at the end of the NewsBusters article laughably states this: “We don’t endorse politicians and we don’t lobby for legislation.” The MRC has to say that because it’s not allowed to endorse candidates or act as lobbyists under its 501(c)3 nonprofit tax designation, but let’s not pretend that its election-year work is anything other than endorsement of the Republican candidate for president, if not by name.