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May 16, 2005
New Survey Shows Very Sad, Scary Things

Oh save me, Jeebus...

A survey to be released Monday reveals a wide gap on many media issues between a group of journalists and the general public. In one finding, 43% of the public says the press has too much freedom, while only 3% of journalists agree. And just 14% of the public can name "freedom of the press" as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in the major poll conducted by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy.

Six in ten among the public feel the media show bias in reporting the news, and 22% say the government should be allowed to censor the press. More than 7 in 10 journalists believe the media does a good or excellent job on accuracy -- but only 4 in 10 among the public feel that way. And a solid 53% of the public thinks stories with unnamed sources should not be published at all.

Editor and Publisher

Naturally, shocking survey results like this - when you are forced to consider that the vast majority of your countrymen & women are stupid to a terrifying degree - should be examined fairly closely. You can really prove anything with a poll if you ask the right (or wrong) questions.

So here are the full survey questions and results.

The question that yielded the "43% think the press has too much freedom" result was:

Overall, do you think the PRESS IN AMERICA has too much freedom to do what it wants, too little freedom to do what it wants, or is the amount of freedom the press has about right?

That seems fair, huh? And yet 43% of the general population answered "Too much freedom."

Basically, it appears that many people not only have a terrifyingly thin grasp of what it means to have freedom, but their opinions don't even actually make any sense.

Consider this, keeping in mind that 43% of these same people think the press has too much freedom...

65% felt it was "very important" for the news media to educate the public about complex issues, while 91% felt it was "very important" for the news media to report information accurately.

A question, Mr. and Mrs. Average American: How exactly is the media supposed to do that without freedom? I thought we were, like, all about freedom. Captain Shock and Awe has been going on and on about it for years.

Finally, my favorite statistic from this survey:

5% felt it was "not very important" (3%) or "not important at all" (2%) that "the news media keep public officials accountable."

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that they asked how important we feel that the news media keep celebrities accountable for their weight loss and/or gain.

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