Chapter 5:The Public and the Media: Love and Hate

Documented Evidence of Public Hostility to the News Media

Gallup Inc., “Media Use and Evaluation,” Copyright © 2007 Gallup Inc. All rights reserved. The survey of 1,010 adults was conducted Sept.14-16, 2007. Since the 2007 poll, the trend has continued: Gallup Inc., Sept. 22, 2012: “Majority in U.S. continues to distrust the media, perceive bias: More perceive liberal bias than conservative bias.”

PewResearchCenter for the People & the Press, “Views of press values and performance: 1985-2007,” Aug. 9, 2007.

Gallup Inc., “Honesty/ethics in professions,”Copyright © 2009, Gallup Inc. All rights reserved. This survey, which replicates the 2007 survey reported in The Ethical Journalist textbook, was conducted Nov. 28-Dec. 1, 2011.

Possible Explanations for the Hostility

Roy Peter Clark, “The public bias against the press,” poynteronline, Jan. 30, 2008. ”The public bias against the press is a more serious problem for American democracy than the bias (real or perceived) of the press itself.”

Black, Steele and Barney, Doing Ethics in Journalism, 17-18.

William F. Woo, Letters From the Editor: Lessons on Journalism and Life (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 24.

Nicholas Lemann, “Fear and favor: Why is everyone mad at the mainstream media?,” The New Yorker, Feb. 14-21, 2005. (Academic databases)

The phenomenon of news-filtered-the-way-you-want-it:

Dirk Smillie, “Inside the opinion machine,” an interview with Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Forbes, Oct. 22, 2009. Some historical perspective on cable’s opinion-driven news shows.

Learning From the Complaints

Too many mistakes:

Robert H. Giles, Introduction to Robert J. Haiman, Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists (Arlington, Virginia: The Freedom Forum’s Free Press/Fair Press Project, 2000), 2. You can download the book here:

Bias:

John Carroll, “Memo on abortion and liberal bias,” memorandum to editors at the Los Angeles Times, May 22, 2003. [See separate file in this folder.]

Jane T. Harrigan and Karen Brown Dunlap, The Editorial Eye, 2nd Ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s , 2004), 118.

John C. Merrill, Journalism Ethics: Philosophical Foundations for News Media (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 167.

Keith Woods, “Transmitting values: A guide to fairer journalism,” included in Michele McLellan, The Newspaper Credibility Handbook (American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2001), 107.

Bernard Goldberg, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News (Washington, D.C.: Regnery: 2001).

Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (New York: Basic Books, 2003).

How the practice of using news reports in political ads creates an appearance of bias:

John Harwood, “More news reports show up in campaign ads, to journalists’ chagrin,” The New York Times, July 10, 2012. The campaigns like to use clips and quotes from the news media because they give the impression of a third-party endorsement. But that makes the journalists appear to be taking sides.

Insensitivity:

Bonnie Bucqueroux and Sue Carter, “Interviewing victims: Tips and techniques,” Michigan State University’s Victims and the Media Program, The Quill, December 1999,

Haiman, Best Practices for Newspaper Journalists, 32.

Bob Steele, “Journalists and tragedy: A passion for excellence and a compassion for people,” poynteronline, May 1, 1999.

Unnamed sources:

See references in Chapter 13 Resources.

Applying Perspective to the Complaints

Lee Wilkins and Renita Coleman, “Ethical journalism is not an oxymoron: In ethical decision-making journalists compare ‘very favorable to those who work in other professions,’” Nieman Reports, Summer 2005. An article based on Wilkins and Coleman’s research. Also: Coleman and Wilkins, The Moral Media: How Journalists Reason About Ethics (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), 39.

George Kennedy, “Loving and doubting journalism at the same time: A University of Missouri survey of public attitudes toward journalism reveals a complex pattern of responsibilities,” Nieman Reports, Summer 2005.

Leon Nelson Flynt, The Conscience of the Newspaper: A Case Book in the Principles and Problems of Journalism, (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1925) 7-11.

Case Study: The Grand Forks Angel

This episode mentioned in Chapter 5 is presented as a case study. [See separate file in this folder.]

Case Study: Fox News and MSNBC Flourish as Partisan News Sources

As discussed in the textbook, complaints of news-media bias most frequently deal with coverage of politics. This sentiment appears to be manifested in the success of Fox News and MSNBC as places where viewers can expect the commentary, and sometimes the news, to reflect a certain viewpoint.

  • Terry McDermott, “Dumb like a fox: Fox News isn’t part of the GOP; it has simply (and shamelessly) mastered the confines of cable,” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2010. The writer analyzes news reporting and commentary on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN on a typical day. Each network seeks “its own niche in the modern television ecology.” Fox and MSNBC court ideologically opposite audiences, overwhelming news coverage with commentary, while CNN focuses on the news.
  • Koppel, “The case against news we can choose,” The Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2010, was pegged to campaign contributions by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. The Olbermann controversy is covered in Chapter 10’s online resources. Koppel wrote in his op-ed essay: “Fox News and MSNBC … show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the spectrum would like it to be.”
  • In response to the Koppel essay: Jack Shafer, “Ted Koppel, bad reporter,” Slate, Nov. 15, 2010.
  • Stu Bykofsky, “Olbermann fair? O’Reilly balanced? What we found,” Philadelphia Daily News, Nov. 4, 2010.

In contrast, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has surveyed readers and found that “they don’t want us to be a newspaper with a strong point of view,” according to editor Julia Wallace. The newspaper has eliminated daily editorials.

  • David Folkenflik, “Bias or balance? Media wrestle with faltering trust,” National Public Radio, April 23, 2010.