Forty-three percent of Americans say the media is largely unbiased or neutral in its coverage, according to a new American Barometer poll conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company.
The survey also found that 57 percent of respondents said the media was biased, with Republicans strongly convinced media is tilted against their party and Democrats less so.
Twenty-six percent of those polled — representing 60 percent of Republicans and only 6 percent of Democrats surveyed — said the media is biased against Republicans, while 10 percent said media is biased in favor of the GOP.
Only 4 percent of respondents said media is biased against Democrats — just 5 percent of Democrats polled — and 17 percent of respondents said media is biased in favor of the party.
President Trump has maintained a tense relationship with much of the news media throughout the first two years of his presidency.
“Bias doesn’t imply bad motives,” Michael Cornfield, research director of the Global Center for Political Management at George Washington University, told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha on “What America’s Thinking.”
“When our president tweets the news is coming from ‘the fake news media,’ he’s implying that there’s something malicious going on, and that takes this whole question area to a level we haven’t had it at since [Sen.] Joe McCarthy [R-Wis.] in the 1950s,” he continued.
Trump has repeatedly referred to CNN as “fake news,” and The New York Times as “failing,” amid attacks on their coverage of him.
However, the president enjoys a more amicable relationship with Fox News, which has developed a reputation as one of Trump’s top news sources.
The American Barometer poll was conducted on Aug. 18-19 among 1,002 registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
— Julia Manchester
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