Forty percent (40%) of voters see the campaign coverage of their local newspapers as unbiased. However, only 20% to 29% view national papers as unbiased.

Among five different papers, the New York Times is seen as the most biased--35% believe its coverage is biased to help Kerry while only 22% believe it is unbiased. This may be a lingering response to the Jayson Blair scandals from last year. At that time, only 46% of Americans viewed the New York Times as a reliable source of information.

The Wall Street Journal is seen as the most balanced. Twenty-nine percent believe it is unbiased, 17% say it is biased to help Bush, and 13% believe it is biased to help Kerry. In addition to being seen as the most balanced, it is the only newspaper not seen as trying to help Kerry.

A similar pattern was found among major broadcast outlets--four out of five were seen as favoring Kerry.

Twenty-four percent (24%) of voters believe that USA Today is biased to help Kerry. Only 9% believe it leans towards Bush. The numbers are virtually identical for the Washington Post (24% biased to help Kerry, 10% biased towards Bush).

For local newspapers, the numbers are 27% favor Kerry and 17% favor Bush.

Partisan perceptions clearly play a role in this media evaluation. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of all Bush voters believe that the New York Times is biased to help Kerry. Among Kerry voters, 32% believe that the paper is unbiased. Not only that, 13% of Kerry voters believe the NY Times is biased to help their man while 12% believe it is biased towards Bush.

While some may be discouraged by the lack of credibility earned by newspapers and other media outlets, it is probably healthy for voters to be skeptical consumers of information.