Steve Lovelady at CJR Daily reports on an Annenberg Public Policy Center poll showing the public is much more sympathetic to partisan journalism than the press is:
The Annenberg poll found that the public is far more sympathetic to the idea of a partisan press than journalists are. Whereas only 16 percent of the journalists polled said it was "a good thing if some news organizations have a decidedly political point of view in their coverage of the news," 43 percent of the public thought it sounded like a swell idea.
Among the journalists, 80 percent thought a partisan press was a "bad thing," but only 53 percent of the public thought so. Four percent of each group had no opinion.
This is the same point that we made in the conclusion to All the President's Spin. As we wrote, "we need a press corps that is willing to clarify complex issues for readers, weigh in on the merits of factual claims, and hold politicians accountable" -- and the "objective" media generally refuses to do so. In some cases, non-"objective" publications do a better job. The problem is that most ideological writing is untrustworthy. We need more reporters who fill what we call the "middle ground of reporters who uphold professional standards of accuracy but call politicians to account for misleading statements." Hopefully that's where the press is headed.
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