Gallup: Most Americans believe newspaper have fake news, biased coverage and nearly half think it’s completely inaccurate

A new Gallup poll found that most Americas believe that the media is biased, inaccurate and full of misinformation, depending on the outlet. One poll found that 62% of U.S. adults believe that the news they see in newspapers, on television or hear on the radio is biased and that 44% say it’s inaccurate.

photo/ Gerd Altmann via pixabay

Americans rated PBS, the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and NPR as the least biased and most accurate news sources. Respondents also rarely distinguished between bias and accuracy — news sources perceived as biased were also usually perceived as inaccurate, and vice versa. Check out the analysis and graphs HERE.

Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history in 2016, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media — down eight percentage points from the year before.

Two new reports from Gallup and the Knight Foundation released Wednesday morning examined Americans’ views of misinformation, bias and inaccuracy in the news, based on February and March surveys of 1,440 adults in the U.S.

According to one poll, “Republicans’ and Democrats’ ratings of the accuracy and bias of certain news organizations diverge sharply, most notably with respect to Fox News, Breitbart News, CNN and MSNBC. In rating various news organizations, Americans make little distinction between bias and accuracy. Generally, those that are perceived as biased are also perceived as inaccurate, and those that are perceived as unbiased are perceived as being accurate.”

Gallup has been polling the American people on their trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” since 1972, and on a yearly basis since 1997.

photo/ Gerd Altmann via pixabay