Pew Report - Public Evaluations of News

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press just released their report, Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985-2009 at http://people-press.org/report/543/ and the results are pretty dismal: “The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.”

It seems that local TV news, daily newspapers, and network TV news are still considered accurate, but other news sources were rated poorly. Could this be because “the partisan gap has widened since 2007 in opinions about whether news organizations are not professional… and are often influenced by powerful people and organizations?” Are American seeing news agencies are politically aligned because of the expanded choices in TV and Internet news sources? Is this an opportunity for librarians to promote information literacy and critical thinking skills like those suggested by Mary W. George in her post “Great Expectations”?