Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two-Decade Low

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Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two-Decade Low

The public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research Center surveys, and Americans' views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. 

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial 1985 survey in this series of reports about the news media's performance, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.
 
Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.
 
The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press' biennial media attitudes survey, conducted July 22-26 among 1,506 adults reached on landlines and cell phones, finds that 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.
 
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.

Read the full report Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two-Decade Low on the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press' Web site.

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