Though most polls show the presidential race at a dead heat, a survey released Sunday shows Sen. John Kerry with a healthy lead among a rarely mentioned demographic -- news consumers.
According to the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, at least half of those who get most of their news from either network news or newspapers support Kerry, whereas only 40 percent support President Bush.
Adults who get most of their news from local TV also prefer Kerry to Bush, 46 - 42 percent.
The only segment of news consumers with a preference for Bush was Fox News viewers, at 70 percent. Sixty-seven percent of CNN viewers favor Kerry.
The survey also measured voter opinions on the quality of this year's election coverage. More than half of Republican respondents see an anti-Bush bias in the coverage, compared to a quarter of Kerry supporters who see an anti-Kerry slant. Both of these numbers are up over the year 2000, when 25 percent of Republicans perceived an anti-Bush bias and 15 percent of Democrats perceived an anti-Gore bias. The phone survey of 1,568 adults was conducted October 15-19 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
International Studies major Freeman Weems sees a slant in the news media's coverage of the election.
"I think it's very biased -- very liberal," said the senior, who cited MSNBC and CNN as his major news sources.
Junior biology major Rachael Brown disagreed.
"They've been hitting both sides, said Brown, who cites time-restraints for limiting her news intake to CNN Headline News.Another survey released last week said Bush supporters have several misconceptions about the war in Iraq and the country's ties to September 11.
Seventy-two percent of Bush supporters believe Iraq either had WMDs or major programs to develop them, and three out of four thought Iraq was providing substantial support to Al-Qaeda or was involved directly in 9/11.
The Duelfer Report to Congress on WMDs, presented on October 6, found no weapon stockpiles and no active weapons programs -- outside of missile development -- over the past 8 years.
Meanwhile, the 9/11 Commission found "no collaborative relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda."
The survey, conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, found that Kerry supporters held opposite views.
Brown was not surprised by the findings.
"There's a lot of misinformation running around," she said.Steven Kull, director of PIPA, said Bush supporters have these misconceptions because they perceive their confirmation by members of the administration. Kull specifically cited the administration's repeated claims of "disarming Saddam" and that "continuing investigations" are looking into WMDs.
Kull said Bush supporters might be "suppressing awareness of unsettling information" because it makes it difficult for them to "imagine that [Bush] could have made incorrect judgments before the war."
Weems said the Bush administration deserved some of the blame.
"They need to get their ducks in a row," he said. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has taken some swipes at the news media.
After Kerry cited unnamed major newspapers as claiming Bush had misstated some of Kerry's positions, Bush shot back, "I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations."
When newspapers began running post-debate fact-checks, some of which said Bush made greater distortions than Kerry, Bush campaign spokesperson Steve Schmidt issued this statement: "The Bush campaign should be able to make an argument without having it reflexively dismissed as distorted or inaccurate by the biggest newspapers in the country."
One of those papers, the New York Times, has long been barred from Vice-President Cheney's Air Force Two.Weems agreed with the administration's assessment of it's press treatment, but also said the press should do more to correct lingering public misconceptions about Iraq.The PIPA survey of 2,725 randomly selected adults was conducted October 12-18, Sept. 3-7 and 8-12 and has a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.
