Poll Shows That More Than 80% of Americans Believe Media is Biased and to Blame for Political Division

A Knight Foundation/Gallup poll released on Tuesday showed that 86% of Americans believe that there is a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of political bias in the way the media covers news.

According to the Federalist, this is an increase of almost 25 percentage points from 2007, when that number was 62%.

The poll showed that Republicans are more likely to say there is a “great deal” of bias, while Democrats are more likely to fall in the “fair amount” camp. However, large majorities of both parties, 78% of Democrats and 94% of Republicans, believe that there is at least some bias in the media.

The Federalist notes further how the poll showed that most Americans believe that the media bias is intentional:

When asked about their views of news organizations they distrust, 79 percent of poll respondents said those outlets were “trying to persuade people to adopt a certain viewpoint.” When news is inaccurate, 54 percent of Americans think it’s because reporters are “misrepresenting the facts,” while 28 percent assume they’re “making them up entirely.”

The poll goes on to say that “more than 8 in 10 Americans — 84 percent — assign the media either a great deal (48 percent) or a moderate amount (36 percent) of blame for political division.”

So can anyone blame them for tuning out?