Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Press accuracy hits low

Not like this is probably news to anyone, but the public's assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades according to this story (http://people-press.org/report/543/).

According to the article...
Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.... Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.

None of this surprises me, as I have very little use for most of the news. However, I would be curious to know how reliable and accurate most of us are personally in comparison? It could be that people in general are just not very accurate or reliable. Or maybe I'm just a tad cynical. Or maybe everyone is. Or maybe I don't know...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this link. We were talking about this just last Sunday as I began a group study of Luke's gospel. The context was eyewitness reports and whether the newspaper gets it right or not.

Tom said...

Randy,

Just a note that this article is about "opinions" on whether news is accurate, not if it actually is or not. If you use this article to teach you will want to note that.