61% Are Still Angry At The Media

Most voters are still angry at the media, but they’re less convinced that the majority of reporters are biased in favor of President Obama.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% of Likely U.S. Voters are at least somewhat angry at the media, with 26% who are Very Angry. Thirty-six percent (36%) don’t share that anger, including 13% who are Not At All Angry at the media. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

This is only slightly less anger than voters expressed in June of last year as the midterm election season was heating up.  It’s down a bit, too, from the 69% who express anger at the current policies of the federal government. 

Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters believe that when most reporters write or talk about Obama, they are trying to help him pass his agenda. That’s down from 48% a year ago. Just 20% think most reporters are trying to block the president from passing his agenda, while 26% say they are merely interested in reporting the news in an unbiased manner. These last two findings are basically unchanged from last June, but now 15% are undecided.

The Political Class, however, likes the job the media is doing.  While 47% of Mainstream voters feel that most reporters are trying to advance the president’s agenda, 64% of those in the Political Class think they are more interested in unbiased reporting. No wonder, then, that 71% of Mainstream voters are angry at the media, but 83% of the Political Class are not.

It’s important to note that the questions did not in any way define media or differentiate between media outlets such as the New York Times and Fox News.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 20-21, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.