The Press and the Public

The extensive poll of public attitudes toward the press conducted by the Gallup Organization for Times Mirror contains interesting, informative and sometimes contradictory findings about how we are perceived by you. As other recent polls have reported, the once-heralded credibility gap does not exist--which is welcome news to us. Most people believe that the press is basically accurate.

Surprisingly, a majority of people believe that news organizations are often influenced by government, business and advertisers in how they report the news. We’re sorry to hear it.

On the whole, the press got pretty good--but not great--marks from the public. Four times as many people think that the press keeps leaders in line than think that the press keeps leaders from doing their jobs. The public applauds this watchdog role of the press, but it also complains that the press often invades peoples’ privacy and gives too much attention to bad news. These views are not altogether consistent.

It is also bracing to note that the public doesn’t pay nearly as much attention to us as we thought, that press issues do not burn in the public consciousness as they do in ours, and that only three in 10 Americans know that the First Amendment is the part of the Constitution that mentions freedom of the press.

What conclusions, if any, should working journalists draw from this survey? Given that we are the daily providers of news of war, famine, strife, crime and unpleasant events, it’s a wonder that people like us at all. We’re far from perfect, and people know that, but they also seem to know that we’re doing our imperfect best in imperfect circumstances, and that it’s better to have the resulting product than not to have it.

The survey tells us to continue doing what we have been doing, and we’ll try to do it better.