News media all over the board on 2016 presidential election

Trying to pin down the impact of the national news media in this year’s presidential races escapes the traditional conclusions of bias and favoritism for candidates in both parties.

A fresh report from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., concludes that Americans are “overwhelmingly engaged” and that the election is on the top of our minds.

The university’s battleground poll produced a finding that almost nine out of 10 likely voters have either “very” or “somewhat” closely followed the campaigns, and more than half report receiving updates via social media.

That finding may explain the mid-April Associated Press conclusion that “just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media.”

The AP, gathering and breaking news since 1846, opened its story declaring, “Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans’ skepticism about what they read on social media.”

The polling shows that accuracy clearly is the most important component of trust.

Skepticism arising from non-traditional social media outlets is a good thing.

If the result is to question the mainstream and new-era national news outlets, both printed and electronic, then maybe Americans are doing a better job of discerning truth via their own initiative.

Examples can be found all across the spectrum of news reporting, whether traditional or the ever-expanding sources instantly available across the internet.

Bias in media giants such as the liberal-leaning CNN has recently been challenged within the network’s own favorite political party.

Anticipating the crucial California primaries, an estimated 2,000 Bernie Sanders supporters recently lined both sides of Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood outside the building housing CNN’s Los Angeles bureau carrying signs that read, “Clinton News Network.”

Sanders supporters complained about the attention that Hillary Clinton was getting and how they felt their candidate was being treated unfairly. They also threw in criticism of the amount of coverage the cable news colossus was giving to Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, TYTnetwork.com reported the former president of the NAACP weighing in on his concerns that CNN’s employees have disproportionately donated to the Clinton campaign and “… there’s a certain tilt to the overall network that leaves a lot to be desired.”

Then there is the almost daily battle being waged by Media Matters for America, among the most left-wing of all liberal websites, mostly obsessed with Fox News and denouncing that network’s coverage as “dubious” when covering just about every aspect of the Clinton campaign.

Media Matters identifies itself as a “progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative information in the U. S. media.”

The result is a constant attack on anything that would put Clinton in a negative light. It is possibly the most prolific of the liberal media in rendering her history of scandals as “right-wing conspiracies.”

Backed by billionaire George Soros, the organization is especially determined to refute all expectations that she faces any problem whatsoever from setting up a unique and unauthorized personal server to manage her government email containing classified information.

Interestingly, another left-wing organization in the Soros network, MoveOn.org, has endorsed Sanders, as it apparently found Clinton not sufficiently committed to socialism.

It is doubtful that websites like these examples are happy to discover the AP findings that a mere 6 percent of voters have much confidence in the news media.

What we will soon see is how all this will develop as the two parties actually nominate their candidates and we head for the November elections.

It will be an interesting and probably historic chapter in media history.

This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 6:33 PM with the headline "News media all over the board on 2016 presidential election."