2 in 3 voters: Media ‘skew the facts’ to boost their candidates

It’s been many years since there was a scandal like Janet Cook winning the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for a Washington Post story she admitted making up about an 8-year-old heroin addict.

Or Jayson Blair at the New York Times, who quit after it was found “he had lifted material from other papers, invented scenes and filed stories from places he had never been.”

But the American voter is still awfully skeptical about what reporters claim.

In fact, Rasmussen Reports said Friday its new poll found that two of three Americans don’t trust the so-called “fact-checking” that reporters do.

We’ve all heard it: A reporter is interviewing a political candidate and interrupts with, “But wasn’t it really …”

The issue was in headlines just this week, as Hillary Clinton’s campaign was insisting that moderator Lester Holt “fact-check” Donald Trump during the first presidential debate and correct him as necessary.

Bernard Goldberg profiles the “mainstream” media’s “liberal bias” in “A Slobbering Love Affair.”

“Most voters believe news organizations play favorites when it comes to fact-checking candidates’ statements, but this skepticism is much stronger among voters who support Donald Trump than those who back his rival Hillary Clinton,” Rasmussen reported.

“The survey found just 29 percent of all likely U.S. voters trust media fact-checking of candidates’ comments. Sixty-two percent believe instead that news organizations skew the facts to help candidates they support,” the report said.

“Eighty-eight percent of voters who support Trump in the presidential race believe news organizations skew the facts, while most Clinton backers (59 percent) trust media fact-checking. Among the supporters of Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, sizable majorities also don’t trust media fact-checking.”

Rasmussen cited another poll, in July, that found only 20 percent of respondents believe reporters try to offer unbiased coverage when they are covering a political campaign.

Nearly 70 percent said reporters are trying to help the candidates they want to win.

The results released Friday are from a national survey of 1,000 likely voters. It was done Sept. 28-29 with a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

“Voters remain skeptical about the political news they are getting. Voters also continue to strongly believe that the media is more interested in controversy than in the issues when it comes to the presidential race,” the report said.

“Most Republicans (79 percent) and voters not affiliated with either major political party (69 percent) believe the media skew the facts to help candidates they support, but only 40 percent of Democrats agree,” Rasmussen said. “The majority of voters in most demographic categories believe the media play favorites when they fact-check candidates’ comments.

“Blacks are more trusting of media fact-checking than whites and other minority voters are.

“Seventy-nine percent of conservatives and 58 percent of moderates think the media skew the facts to help their favorites, but liberals by a 51 percent to 39 percent margin trust media fact-checking.”

The report said: “Prior to the first televised debate between the major party candidates Monday night, the Clinton campaign stated that a failure by the moderator to fact-check Trump’s statements in real time would give him an unfair advantage. However, voters were pretty convinced that the moderators would be helping Clinton more than Trump.”

Bernard Goldberg profiles the “mainstream” media’s “liberal bias” in “A Slobbering Love Affair.”

 

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