Two national polls released late in the week confirmed the public widely recognizes the news media’s agenda in favor of Hillary Clinton and decidedly against Donald Trump, a reality documented in a NewsBusters study earlier in the week.
“By nearly 10-1, all those surveyed say the news media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see Clinton rather than Trump elected,” Susan Page and Karina Shedrofsky reported deep into a Thursday USA Today story on the latest USA Today/Suffolk University poll on the Clinton-Trump race.
The October 27 article elaborated on how even a solid majority of Clinton supporters also realize journalists want Clinton to win: “That includes 82% of Trump supporters and 74% of Clinton supporters. Six in 10 Trump supporters say the news media is coordinating stories with individual campaigns, rather than acting on its own accord. Three in 10 of Clinton supporters feel that way.”
The specifics of the 10-1, 75 to 8 percent, per the PDF of the poll posted by Suffolk University:
An Associated Press-GfK poll, released later Thursday, discovered: “56 percent of likely voters say the media is biased against Trump, just 5 percent say it’s biased in his favor and 37 percent say coverage is mostly balanced.”
AP reporters Jonathan Lemire and Emily Swanson noted Clinton backers observe the imbalance: “Eighty-seven percent of Trump’s supporters see the media as biased against him, and even Hillary Clinton’s supporters are more likely to see bias against Trump than bias in his favor, 30 percent to 8 percent. Sixty percent of Clinton’s supporters see no bias in either direction.....
“By contrast, 51 percent say the media is biased in Clinton’s favor and just 8 percent see media bias against her, while 39 percent say the media is mostly balanced. Sixty-seven percent of Clinton’s supporters say media coverage of their candidate is balanced, while 87 percent of Trump supporters say the media is biased in her favor.”
In the USA Today story, a Floridian succinctly explained the decline in trust in the media:
“When I was a kid, we watched the news; we would see what happened, and now it’s what they want you to see,” says David Zigerman, 55, a Trump supporter from North Palm Beach, Fla. “There’s no gray area in wondering whether the media is biased.”
On Thursday, the One America News Network (OANN) ran a story on the Media Research Center’s study, by Rich Noyes, which found “Donald Trump has received significantly more broadcast network news coverage than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but nearly all of that coverage (91%) has been hostile.” Here’s an excerpt from that OANN piece by John Hines:
Video: @OANN explored liberal media bias in campaign, featured @NewsBusters’ @DanGainor and @RichNoyes #OANN #TTT16 pic.twitter.com/J757MGOWGa
— Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) October 27, 2016
