Thursday, August 18, 2016

Survey: Reporters More Interested In Style Than Substance

Most voters still think the media is more interested in controversy than in the issues when it comes to the presidential race, and supporters of Donald Trump strongly believe the coverage of his public comments is a classic example. Most Hillary Clinton supporters say Trump’s just a sloppy speaker.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 74% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that in covering presidential candidates the media is more interested in creating controversies about them than in reporting where they stand on the issues. Just 20% think the media is more interested in covering where the candidates stand on the issues. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

This marks no change from last year at this time  but is still a better view of the media than voters held for several years prior to that when over 80% regularly said reporters were more interested in controversy.

Trump seems to court controversy with some of his public comments, and according to Rasmussen, 37% of voters think the media is blowing up these comments out of proportion. Forty-nine percent (49%), however, say the Republican presidential nominee is just being careless when he makes these comments. Only 10% feel that he is being crafty when he says them.

Among voters who support Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, 76% think the media is blowing up his comments out of proportion. But 80% of Clinton supporters say Trump is careless with his comments. Those who back Clinton are twice as likely as Trump voters to think the GOP nominee is being crafty.

While 89% of Trump supporters believe the media is more interested in creating controversy than in the issues, just 54% of Clinton voters agree.

The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on August 15-16, 2016 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

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