A majority of American college students say they don’t trust the media to be fair or accurate, and a significant minority believes campus administrators should “prohibit biased or offensive speech,” according to a new Gallup poll.
The survey, which was sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Newseum Institute, was conducted from Feb. 29-March 15, 2016. A total of 3,072 full-time U.S. college students, aged 18 to 24, were polled.
Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed said they had “little or no trust” in the press to report events fairly. Seventy percent said, however, that students shouldn’t exclude reporters from covering campus demonstrations.
“But students are divided when evaluating certain specific reasons to curtail press access, with nearly half saying the following reasons are legitimate to do so: The people at the protest or public gathering believe reporters will be biased (49 percent); the people at the protest say they have a right to be left alone (48 percent); and the people at the protest want to tell their own story on the Internet and social media (44 percent),” the Knight Foundation explained.
The poll’s findings come after former University of Missouri professor Melissa Click made headlines last fall when she was caught on tape calling on demonstrators to eject two student journalists from a campus rally.
Click was fired several months later. She was also charged in January with 3rd degree assault.
Though a majority of students say colleges should expose people to opinions and viewpoints that differ from their own, a non-insignificant minority believes campus administrators should ban “offensive” speech, the survey found.
“[S]tudents say colleges should expose students to all types of speech and viewpoints (78 percent) than say colleges should prohibit biased or offensive speech in the furtherance of a positive learning environment (22 percent),” the Knight Foundation reported.
“Students do appear to distinguish controversial views from what they see as hate speech,” it added. “They believe colleges should be allowed to establish policies restricting language and certain behavior that are intentionally offensive to certain groups, but not expression of political views that may upset or offend members of certain groups.”
U.S. adults fared worse: Only 66 percent say they support colleges exposing students to differing opinions.
The survey had several major additional findings, including that U.S. college students are generally more positive when it comes to their view of whether their rights are secure.
Those surveyed by Gallup, “are highly confident in the security of each of the five First Amendment rights, particularly freedom of the press (81 percent), freedom to petition the government (76 percent) and freedom of speech (73 percent),” the group reported.
“While majorities of U.S. adults also believe these rights are secure, their confidence greatly lags behind college students’. This is especially pronounced for freedom of speech (56 percent among U.S. adults vs. 73 percent among college students), freedom of the press (64 percent vs. 81 percent) and freedom to petition the government (58 percent vs. 76 percent),” the report added.
Gallup sampled 240 American four-year colleges, including the University of California, Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology, James Madison University, University of North Carolina at Pembroke and the University of Oregon.
The study’s findings suggest that, “while the core principles of the First Amendment are well-rooted in society, what those rights mean is up for debate in an era of changing media habits, new forms of technology-mediated conversation, and important national debates on race and diversity,” the Knight Foundation concluded.
