YOUR AD HERE — REACH DISCERNING READERS OF SERIOUS JOURNALISM
Rates upon inquiry. Clowns extra.
COURTS✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Americans prize a free press, with some caveats
Filed 2h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk
THIS STORY IS SCORED
As I Figure
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Eric Gillet · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
A Pew Research Center study of about 3,500 adults found 73% of Americans call freedom of the press extremely or very important, but that support drops once weighed against other values: 53% said stopping inaccurate reporting matters more than press freedom, and majorities backed government power to force takedowns of stories deemed national security risks (60%) or false (51%). Support collapsed to 10-14% when the hypothetical story was merely critical of officials or favored one party.
Only 28% said the media is currently completely free to report, down from 33% a year earlier, while 44% said press freedom has declined under President Trump's second term versus 12% who said it increased, split sharply along party lines. Just 51% correctly identified the First Amendment as the source of press freedom, and both parties agreed, at 71%, that relations between the Trump administration and the media are bad.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
People love the idea of a free press the same way they love the idea of eating vegetables, right up until somebody puts one on the actual plate. A quarter of the country thinks press freedom comes from the Declaration of Independence, which is a document that doesn't mention it, so some of this confidence is running on vibes rather than civics class. Still, seventy one percent agreeing the administration and the press don't get along is about the one number in this whole survey nobody needs a focus group to explain.
