TALKING HEADS

Numbing Numbers

By Vaughn Ververs, NationalJournal.com
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, May 27, 2005

If anyone thinks this ongoing debate and hand-wringing over the state of the nation's press is another concocted or overblown controversy, two recent surveys should help convince them otherwise.

According to the results, the disconnect between members of the media and the general public makes the red state/blue state divide look like an exchange of pleasantries. The journalistic community should be more than just disheartened by the numbers -- they should be downright frightened.


The public may see journalists as more ethical than politicians, but they don't appear to trust them with a free rein.






Just how large is the perception gap between the press and the public? That's what the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania set out to discover in a recent survey. The Center conducted two separate surveys, one encompassing 673 journalists working in some capacity for a news organization and one that polled 1,500 members of the general public. Putting the results side by side, it seems as though the surveys were conducted on two different planets.

Since media bias is the most heated part of the discussion, let's start there. The Annenberg survey shows why conservatives have for years complained of a liberal bias in the news. Among the media sample, 29 percent described themselves as "liberal," 49 percent said they were "moderate" and just 9 percent claimed to be "conservative." The public broke down along these lines: Twenty-four percent liberal, 33 percent moderate and 38 percent conservative. To further drive home the point, 58 percent of those in the public familiar with the CBS story on President Bush and the National Guard said the network did a good job of correcting it. However, 69 percent said that liberal bias was at least part of the reason the story ran in the first place. Among the media, 54 percent said it played no part.

Social attitudes of the press were probed, as well. Asked if they favor legislation in their state to allow same-sex marriage, 59 percent of journalists said they did. The same question was not asked of the public, but most previous polling has shown wide majorities against such legislation. Both groups were asked how often they attend religious services, and 40 percent of the public said they attend at least once a week compared to 17 percent of journalists.

Liberal complaints about the media were bolstered, too. The public clearly believes corporate or business interests intrude on news judgement. Among the public sample, 79 percent agreed that a media organization "that receives substantial advertising revenue from a company would hesitate to report negative stories about that company." Asked whether media outlets "either intentionally or unintentionally" avoided stories "unfavorable" to advertisers, 63 percent said that happens either to a "small extent" or "not at all."

Let's turn to the issue of credibility. It's not surprising that 86 percent of journalists believe their profession gets the "facts straight," but it might surprise them that 48 percent of the public thinks the media is "often inaccurate." More disturbing, 65 percent of the public believes that when mistakes are made, the media either tries to "ignore" them or cover them up. In the press sample, 74 percent say mistakes are quickly reported. And while the ethical practices of journalists rank far ahead of lawyers and politicians in the public view, is that really a feather in the media's cap?

Now comes the most disturbing finding, one that's echoed in a similar survey conducted recently for the University of Connecticut. In the Annenberg study, 51 percent of the public agreed that the government either sometimes or always has a "right to limit" the right of the press to report a story. In the Connecticut survey, 43 percent said there is "too much" freedom of the press. Additionally, that study found that 89 percent said the accuracy of a story that relies on an unnamed source should be questioned. The public may see journalists as more ethical than politicians, but they don't appear to trust them with a free rein.

These findings should be discouraging to anyone involved in the "mainstream media," especially the wide gap in perception. Some of these numbers suggest a level of denial among the press, which would help explain why there's so much navel-gazing in the wake of a media "scandal," but very little change. The public sees fundamental institutional flaws where the press sees cosmetic impurities.

Distrust of the press is disturbing, but not an entirely unhealthy attitude. What's downright frightening are the attitudes toward freedom of the press. When a majority of the public believes that the government has a right to limit the media's freedom to report a story, that should send shivers down the spine of any First Amendment lover. It's one thing to argue that each press outlet should consider the broader consequences and public good in publishing individual stories, but to suggest that the government ought to have that power is censorship, pure and simple.

So much of this debate over the state of the media and its future direction has been driven by the ideological and political divide in the country. Sometimes the complaints and arguments are important and serious. Sometimes the whole discussion devolves into absurdity. But these surveys show how precarious of a position the press is in. And they show how critically important it is to fix the problems if we want to maintain a free press -- and a free nation.

-- Vaughn Ververs is a NationalJournal.com contributing editor as well as editor of The Hotline. His e-mail address is vververs@nationaljournal.com.