Following up on polls taken in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the School of Journalism at Indiana University in 2002 and 2013 surveyed journalists across the profession to create a statistical portrait of the typical American journalist. The 2013 update, which consisted of 1,080 intervews with journalists and published under the title “The American Journalist in the Digital Age,” found a record low 7% willing to label themselves as “Republican.”
KEY FINDINGS:
- While 28 percent of journalists identified themselves as Democrats, only one-fourth as many, a piddling seven percent, called themselves Republican.
- For context, 30 percent of American adults call themselves Democrats, while 24 percent identify as Republicans, according to a late-2013 Washington Post poll.
- When the same poll was conducted in 2002, 36 percent of journalists called themselves Democrats, compared to 18 percent who said they were Republican, a two-to-one disparity.
- According to the report: “About half of all journalists (50.2 percent) said they were independents, which is 10 percentage points above the figure for all U.S. adults (40 percent).”
- The poll consisted of “358 daily newspaper journalists, 238 from weekly newspapers, 132 from television stations and networks, 97 from radio, 92 from online news organizations, 103 from the wire services and 60 from news magazines.”
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