The Depressed Press

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press' recent survey of nearly 550 national and local media workers finds journalists "unhappy with the way things are going in their profession these days." The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz writes, "Two-thirds of national media staffers, and 57 percent of the locals, believe that profit pressures are seriously hurting news coverage. Nearly half of national journalists say the press is too timid." In fact, 55 percent of national press felt that the media's treatment of George Bush was not critical enough. In a perhaps-related finding, "national news media ... express considerably less confidence in the political judgment of the American public than they did five years ago."