Pew Poll: Most Journalists Don’t Believe In ‘Equal Coverage’; 43% Admit Bias

A new Pew Research survey of nearly 12,000 journalists found most don’t think all sides deserve “equal coverage” and a significant minority of 43 percent recognize the bias of journalists impacts their coverage. More believe their news organization does than does not have enough diversity of political ideology (34 to 29 percent), but “by a considerable margin, more journalists say their organization does not have enough racial and ethnic diversity (52%) than say it does (32%).”

Details on the “diversity” numbers in part 6 of the report, “Journalists give industry mixed reviews on newsroom diversity, lowest marks in racial and ethnic diversity.”

The extensive poll, conducted in February and March and released on Tuesday, determined “a small majority of journalists (55%) say that every side does not always deserve equal coverage” and while “a large majority…(82%) say journalists should separate their views from what they report on,” a “considerably smaller majority (55%) think journalists are largely able to do this, while 43% say journalists are often unable to do so.”

Conservatives, the survey confirmed, are more interested in equal coverage than those to the left: “Journalists who say their news organizations have audiences that lean to the right politically are much more likely to endorse equal coverage of all voices than those who say their organizations’ audiences lean left. Nearly six-in-ten journalists with right-leaning audiences (57%) say journalists should always strive to give equal coverage, almost twice the share who say this among those with left-leaning audiences (30%), and somewhat higher than the share among journalists who say their outlet has a politically mixed audience (49%).”

An excerpt from part 5 of the Pew report, “Journalists see political sorting of news audiences as a much bigger problem than the public does,” posted on June 14:

Another area of journalism that is often seen through a political lens is the question of news stories representing “all sides” of an issue and/or giving equal voice. This concept is often referred to as “bothsidesism” in journalism – which revolves around whether those making false statements or unsupported conjecture warrant as much attention as people making factual statements with solid supporting evidence.

This debate gained a new level of intensity during Donald Trump’s presidency and the widespread disinformation and competing views around both the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Only 55% of journalists agree that all sides do not deserve equal coverage. However, 44% believe journalists should strive for equal coverage.

However, Americans support equal coverage much more than the rest of the world. A representative poll of 9 388 adults in the United States was conducted February 7-13. It found that about three quarters (76%) of respondents agreed with the idea of equal coverage by journalists. While majorities of both parties believe this, Republicans and Democrats who are inclined to lean towards the GOP (87%) feel more strongly than Democrats or Democratic leaners (68%) that this is true.

This is also an area where journalists themselves disagree based on the political leaning of their news organization’s audience. Journalists who say their news organizations have audiences that lean to the right politically are much more likely to endorse equal coverage of all voices than those who say their organizations’ audiences lean left. Nearly six out of ten journalists from right-leaning communities (57%) agree that journalists should strive for equal coverage. That’s almost double what happens among journalists with left-leaning audiences (30%) and slightly more than journalists who believe their outlet is politically diverse (49%).

There are mixed opinions among journalists about whether it is possible to keep personal views from their reporting

A central issue in bias in news coverage concerns whether journalists have the ability to remove personal views from their reporting. Journalists strongly believe that journalists should not share their personal views in reporting. However, less consensus exists about whether this is possible.

A majority (82%) of journalist respondents believe that journalists must separate their views and the stories they cover. The majority of journalists surveyed (55%) believe journalists can do it largely, but 43% think that journalists often aren’t able.

These figures are similar regardless of journalists’ audience makeup: 55% of those who say their organization’s audience leans to the right politically feel journalists are largely able to separate their views from their reporting, as do 52% of those who say their audience leans left and 58% who say their organization’s audience is politically mixed.

Still, three-quarters of U.S. journalists believe in journalists’ ability to agree on the basic facts of issues and events in the topic area (or beat) they cover, even if journalists report on these facts in different ways.

A majority of journalists admit that not all people will find the stories they tell accurate. 52 percent of the journalists surveyed said it was impossible to publish news that almost everyone believes is accurate. 47% however, believe it is possible.

Public opinion is more negative than that of journalists, 62% saying that it’s not possible to provide accurate news, which is far greater than 37% who claim this is possible.