Photo courtesy of news.gallup.com
Virtual Lecture from Professor McCaffrey: April 30, 2020
As I mentioned in our final poll question, we will circle back to what we talked about during our very first class in January. You were told that this Ethics in Journalism course was about identifying the reasons why the media ought to be ethical, understanding the standards that have been set for media performance, and critiquing media performance against these reasons and standards.
Our final poll question replicates the broader query that Gallup has presented to the general population for a number of years running concerning their rating of the honesty and ethical standards of journalists.
As we have already learned, the credibility of the mainstream media has been increasingly questioned, particularly as the news industry has tried to adapt to the Internet age. Only 28% of the respondents to a 2019 Gallup Poll on this subject rated the honesty and ethical standards of journalists as high or very high compared to 33% in 2018. (By comparison, nurses received the highest approval rating in 2019, with 85% of respondents rating their honesty and ethical standards as high or very high.
A University of Arkansas statewide poll of Arkansans in 2016 found that 14.8% of respondents rated the honesty and ethical standards of journalists as high or very high. The percentage of residents rating these standards as high or very high is virtually the same as in 2014, improving just .9 of a percentage point. At the same time, the percentage of Arkansans who rated the honesty and ethical standards of journalists as very low jumped from 14.9% in 2014 to 22.3% in 2016, a 7.4% increase.
Finally, I will leave you with some links to more recent polls by the Pew Research Center regarding news coverage of the pandemic.
About Seven-in-Ten U.S. Adults Say They Need to Take Breaks From COVID-1- News, by Amy Mitchell, J. Baxter Oliphant and Elisa Shearer
Americans Immersed in COVID-19 News; Most Think Media Are Doing Fairly Well Covering It, by Amy Mitchell and J. Baxter Oliphant
Older Americans Continue to Follow COVID-19 News More Closely Than Younger Adults, by Mark Jurkowitz and Amy Mitchell