The Question of "Dangerous Ground"

Just who is Mark Penn? The name in question belongs to the former top campaign strategist of former presidential candidate, Senator Hillary Clinton. Penn held that position until April of this year when the two parted ways in regard to a disagreement over a certain free trade agreement which the Senator opposed. This comes to us by way of Sourcewatch (and the crazy picture of him comes courtesy of thesun.co.uk).

Not to be forgotten, Penn came back into the news today when, in an interview with CBS, he stated that the media were on "very dangerous ground" in their treatment of Governor Palin.

"I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race," Penn stated, "And they continue to have growing credibility problems ... This is an election in which the voters are going to decide for themselves. The media has lost credibility with them."

When I read this I wondered whether or not anything Penn was saying could be verified. Being a Geocentric co-host then, I set out to investigate. Are the media really losing credibility?

Last October, Gallup came out with an article showing the results of a poll that had been in process since 2001. As can be seen in the chart here, "more than twice as many Americans say the news media are too liberal (45%) rather than too conservative (18%)."

So how does that measure up against Americans' party affiliations? This next chart gives you all the numbers you could want. I should point out here that the 45% mentioned above are composed of 77% Republicans, 43% Independents, and 15% Democrats. Of course Democrats, being affiliated with the more liberal of the two parties, are more prone to believe the media present information "just about right."

This potentially speaks to one of two possibilities. Perhaps Republicans are way out of touch in their opinions of the media. Or perhaps the fact that their sentiments are supported (though obviously not echoed) by the views of Independents shows that they are on to something. But these are the results of only a single poll.

So now I must leave the matter up to you. What do think about bias in the media, or what do you think about their treatment of Governor Palin? Has the media lost credibility with you? If so, and if their credibility continues to decline, what do you suppose will be the future of media coverage in this country?