ABSTRACT
In 1990, NBC News senior vice president Tim Russert penned a widely read op-ed article criticizing broadcast coverage of the 1988 presidential campaign. The news media’s emphasis on reporting campaign rhetoric over facts, their reluctance to focus on the record rather than on “claims” about the record, seemed to make it difficult for voters to distinguish between truth and propaganda. Democracy in the United States depends increasingly upon the news media. Similarly, those who relied on TV as their main source of news scored slightly lower than those who relied on other sources, such as newspapers. The Republican claim that the news media promoted “pro-Clinton facts” more aggressively than “pro-Bush facts” was not supported by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) survey. FAIR’s survey of the US electorate during the 1992 presidential election campaign, by contrast, was concerned not only with what people thought but also with the knowledge that lay behind those attitudes, and the sources of that knowledge.
