oh, Howie.
May. 24th, 2004 07:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sisyphusshruggedHoward Kurtz cherrypicks the Pew survey of the press
Of course, those numbers don't exactly play out the way Howie might expect in the value questions. 20% of national news executives (you know, the ones who make the decisions) describe themselves as conservative. Their answers to the value questions? 92% don't believe it's necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and 92% think homosexuality should be accepted by society, while 3% and 5% respectively declined to express an opinion.
Maybe the liberal/conservative split is not as simple as Howie would have it?
Amusingly enough, the New York Times (20%) and the Washington Post (4%), those fervent supporters of Our Fearless Leader's excellent adventure, were the most cited liberal media, while 69% named Fox "unprompted" as having a conservative bias.
The liberal Washington Post, it bears noting, hired Howie Kurtz as a media analyst.
More than half of those surveyed say the media haven't been tough enough on President Bush.
Nearly half say reporting is increasingly sloppy and filled with errors.
And almost half say journalists often let their ideological views color their work.
Media bashers? Disaffected Democrats? No, these negative views are being expressed by journalists and executives at national media outlets. And local journalists aren't far behind in their criticism.
A joint project by the Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism reveals a darkly pessimistic view of the profession among its own members, often echoing the criticisms of the public at large.
The 55 percent of national journalists, and 37 percent of local ones, who see the media as soft on Bush may well be reflecting their own views of the president. At national outlets, 34 percent describe themselves as liberal, 54 percent as moderate and 7 percent as conservative. (The local split was 23-61-12.) Nearly 7 in 10 of the liberal national journalists criticized the Bush coverage.
"You'd expect the minority who say they have a liberal point of view to be more critical of the press when it comes to Bush," says Pew Director Andrew Kohut, whose organization interviewed 547 journalists. But he noted that 44 percent of the self-described moderates also hold that view.
Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director, says the growing proportion of self-identified liberals in the national media -- and the fact that "conservatives are not very well represented" -- is having an impact. "This is something journalists should worry about," he says. "Maybe diversity in the newsroom needs to mean more than ethnic and gender diversity."
Of course, those numbers don't exactly play out the way Howie might expect in the value questions. 20% of national news executives (you know, the ones who make the decisions) describe themselves as conservative. Their answers to the value questions? 92% don't believe it's necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and 92% think homosexuality should be accepted by society, while 3% and 5% respectively declined to express an opinion.
Maybe the liberal/conservative split is not as simple as Howie would have it?
Amusingly enough, the New York Times (20%) and the Washington Post (4%), those fervent supporters of Our Fearless Leader's excellent adventure, were the most cited liberal media, while 69% named Fox "unprompted" as having a conservative bias.
The liberal Washington Post, it bears noting, hired Howie Kurtz as a media analyst.
