Oddly reassuring poll result of the day!
posted at 10:00 am on October 8, 2007 by Allahpundit
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Time for ye olde “trust in media varies by party” poll thumbsucker. Pew did a more thorough job with the same question two months ago, in particular by tracking eroding GOP support over time to show how powerful the rise of conservative talk radio has been on Republicans’ perceptions of the MSM. The new data from Gallup is more cursory and doesn’t address long-term trends except for noting the 20-point decline in overall confidence in the media between 1976 and 1997; compare that with the Pew data and you’ll see that most of that decline likely came at the tail end of that period. But here’s the oddly reassuring result I promised you:
It’s an article of absolute faith among the nutroots that the media skews conservative, even occasionally to the point of acting like, ahem, “lapdogs” for the Bush administration. (See Mortman for a recent example of “lapdog” behavior.) Many in the media are only too happy to accept that criticism, of course, since it gives them a license to tack even further left in the interest of “restoring balance.” According to Gallup, though, the nutroots position is decidedly the minority position among Democrats, with only six percent more finding the media too conservative than too liberal. Hard to draw any broad conclusions about the Kosification or lack thereof of the party generally from that, but the result isn’t exactly discouraging.
Update: Reader Scott M. wonders whether we can safely extrapolate from the Gallup results and last week’s headline-grabbing Fox News poll that the nutroots comprises roughly 20% of the Democratic Party. Hmmm.
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Sooo… what was the big event between 97 and 98 which caused the huge jump in the stats? Whatever it was has had a lasting serious impact on how people view the media… you can’t have a perptual 20% shift in data like that without some watershed event…
But I can’t remember any really big event right about then…
Romeo13 on October 8, 2007 at 10:18 AM
Who are the 3% of conservatives that think the media are too liberal?
My guess? John Cole, Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald.
Hoodlumman on October 8, 2007 at 10:21 AM
*conservative
I meant conservative @ 10:21
Hoodlumman on October 8, 2007 at 10:21 AM
16% of dems think the media is too conservative, 19% think we’ll be better off if we lose the war. Margin of error 3%. We now have an accurate count of moonbats in the democrat party.
Gwillie on October 8, 2007 at 10:24 AM
Dan Rather was unavailable for comment.
JammieWearingFool on October 8, 2007 at 10:26 AM
That 22% is the same far left loonie toons who protested the Columbus Day parade in Denver ysterday.
Tony737 on October 8, 2007 at 10:35 AM
Just the fact that so many dems think the media is just right shows that it skews left.
Bob's Kid on October 8, 2007 at 11:15 AM
1) The 3% falls within the margin of error. These people obviously made an error somewhere answering the poll question. “If you mean by ‘Are you a Republican’ that I’m really a Democrat, then yes, I am a Republican.”
2) I was thinking the same thing that the 22% roughly estimates the block the Nutroots makes of the current DNC. It’s all allegorical, however, and one number does not necessarily mean equality, but it’s striking that the 20% number keeps popping up.
One thing’s for certain– that 20% votes and gives craploads of cashola.
It’s even scarier to think that one in five Democrats are that bent. Just apply it to a college. Would you respect a professor if he said the news was too conservative? What else does he/she believe? That 9/11 was caused by a massive government coverup?
Nethicus on October 8, 2007 at 11:24 AM
Perception is reality.
spec_ops_mateo on October 8, 2007 at 11:27 AM
Perception is not reality. Reality is reality.
The fact that 59% of the dems think that all is hunky-dory with the media is the most telling and a sure indicator that the media is leftie, especially compared with the ‘happiness meter’ of the other two groups.
Entelechy on October 8, 2007 at 1:08 PM
I hate Polls because no one ever calls me for my opinion and I sit by the phone all day.
It really depends on who’s doing the reporting. I read the same stories on the web that gets reported on the evening news and the TV tends to do [bites of news] leaving gaps in the whole story. Radio does also, however, newspaper in general does detail stories. I guess they get paid by the word.
What I really see is the [selective] reporting of news that determines bias.
It’s what they feed you determines what you are.
Kini on October 8, 2007 at 1:54 PM
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