A majority of U.S. adults (59%) reject the thought of adding interpretation, saying that the journalism should present the facts alone, a recent Pew center survey found. Although the general public prefers the print media to present “just the facts,” they will not even agree on what the facts are. within the same survey, 81% of registered voters said that almost all supporters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump not only disagree over plans and policies but also disagree on basic facts.
Clinton supporters, on the opposite hand, are evenly split on the difficulty, with half against interpretation and half favoring it. this might be linked to a perception among Republicans that coverage of their candidate had been too tough. Among Republicans, 46% thought coverage of Trump had been too tough, while only three-in-ten Democrats thought the identical coverage of Clinton, in line with Pew Research Center’s mid-September survey.
One thing the general public does approve of to encourage clarity in presenting the news: fact-checking. The overwhelming majority of registered voters say that fact-checking is the responsibility of the fourth estate. And even people who oppose the interpretation of facts generally favor the fact-checking role of the print media. Fully 81% of U.S. adults preferring facts without interpretation believe fact-checking could be a major or minor responsibility of the fourth estate. About the identical share of these preferring interpretations, 83%, think fact-checking could be a responsibility.
Taken together, this implies the general public might not see fact-checking as an act of interpretation. Since a majority prefer the print media to avoid interpretation, the general public is also more likely to approve of the fourth estate analyzing public figures’ statements when presented as fact-checking – using facts to either verify a bit of data or correct a bit of misinformation – instead of as analysis or commentary.