Eight in 10 voters — 78 percent — say media coverage during the 2016 presidential election was biased, with 59 percent saying the press favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, according to a post-election Media Research Center poll. Roughly one-third, 32 percent, of Clinton voters believe the press was “pro- Clinton.”
Ninety-seven percent said they did not allow any of the bias from the media to impact their vote. Sixty-nine percent of voters say the media is not honest and truthful.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell says the poll shows the press is in “panic mode” after Trump’s victory.
“The media are in full panic mode because the American people rejected their leftist agenda — and them. People didn’t believe the nonsense that the media were politically neutral. Even a third of Hillary’s supporters believe they were pro-Hillary!” Bozell stated in a press release, adding:
When you have a strong majority of actual voters saying the national ‘news’ media were biased in favor of Hillary Clinton and tried to influence the public to vote for her; and believing they are fundamentally dishonest, you have a major problem that can’t be fixed with an apology. The public has rejected this institution as being either objective or truthful. There is an institutional bias at major media networks that must be repaired and I am highly skeptical that news executives are interested or capable of undertaking this responsibility.
Despite the overwhelming and persistent bias of this cycle in particular, I am heartened by the fact that, according to our poll, the American people didn’t let it sway their vote. If this isn’t a wakeup call for the left-wing media to stay out of politics, I don’t know what is.
