Fewer think news media is biased, survey finds

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More than half of Americans think the US media reports news with a bias. The good news? The press gets a better grade today than in recent years, according to a new survey.

The 20th annual State of the First Amendment survey, out from The First Amendment Center at the Newseum Institute in Washington (DC), found 57% of Americans who participated in the survey said that the news media reports with bias. Even at a time when the Trump Administration is clashing with the mainstream media, this response is better than in 2016 when 77% of Americans said the media was biased. A similar response was found in 2015, when 76% answered that way. Respondents thought more favorably of the press in 2013 and 2014, when 54% and 59% said they thought the media was biased Perhaps fueling the lack of trust in the media is the vacuum in which many people get their news. More than half (53%) of the 1,009 adults, surveyed in May 2017, said they preferred to get news from outlets aligned with their political views. The center's executive director Lata Nott called that finding "both obvious and disheartening" and "one of the factors that keeps us so divided," in an essay accompanying the report.


Fewer think news media is biased, survey finds