Washington (AFP)
Americans are very divided over the impartiality of fact-checkers in the media, Republicans are particularly suspicious of these journalists whose specialty and verify the veracity of certain information, according to a poll released Thursday.
According to the Pew Research Center survey, 50% of respondents believe that fact-checkers are impartial while 48% believe they are biased.
But the fracture is especially visible by taking into account the political color of the respondents: some 70% of Republicans say they do not trust these verifiers of information while, conversely, 69% of Democrats trust them.
"Republicans seem to have serious reservations about the bias of these groups (auditors) .The Democrats think, in general, that they treat all points of view fairly," said Mason Walker and Jeffrey Gottfried, two researchers from the Pew Research Center.
Independents are almost equally divided between those who think that fact-checkers are skewed (47%) and those who think they are impartial (51%).
The poll is published nearly two and a half years after Donald Trump's arrival at the White House and his steady stream of accusations against the mainstream media, which he believes are unfairly treated.
He recently accused the New York Times of being a traitor to the homeland and he often treats journalists as "enemies of the people".
Mistrust of the media is high and 70% of respondents feel they have a tendency to take sides in terms of political or social coverage.
Among Republicans, 89% think the media are biased. Democrats and independents are mostly of the same opinion, but to a lesser extent.
The survey was conducted between February 19 and March 4 at 6,127 adults and the margin of error is 1.6 percentage points.
? 2019 AFP