A new poll released on Wednesday by Rasmussen Reports found that nearly half the American people are still convinced that the media are biased against President-elect Donald Trump since Election Day.
Rasmussen reported that 48 percent “of all Likely U.S. Voters believe most reporters are biased against the president-elect” while “12% think they are biased for Trump, while 31% feel most reporters try to be fair and balanced.”
What’s intriguing is that, while the numbers were drastically different, a majority of Republican respondents and plurality of Democratic participants agreed that the media coverage of Trump was tilted against him:
A closer look finds that 74% of Republicans and a plurality (47%) of voters not affiliated with either major political party think most reporters are biased against Trump. Even Democrats think most reporters are more likely to be biased against Trump (26%) than biased for him (16%).
But 47% of voters in President Obama’s party believe most reporters try to be fair and balanced, a view shared by 29% of unaffiliateds and only 15% of GOP voters.
Among all voters, just 28% rate the media coverage of Trump as good or excellent. Forty-one percent (41%) consider the news coverage of the president-elect to be poor. This is comparable to attitudes about the coverage of the presidential contest between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
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Conducted on January 2, Rasmussen’s latest poll also found that “[m]ost voters turn to cable news for political coverage, and Fox News remains the top channel for these viewers.” However, Rasmussen admitted that “voters still remain dubious about much of the political news they are getting.”
As NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham wrote on September 27, a previous Rasmussen poll concluded that 46 percent of likely voters thought that the upcoming presidential debate moderators would favor Hillary Clinton (which most of them did — spare Chris Wallace).
That was contrasted with how only six percent went into the debates thinking the moderators would be more inclined to help Trump.
In addition, Graham covered this poll again on September 30 and noticed how a measly 29 percent of likely voters trusted the media to responsibly fact-check the major presidential candidates.
