California Poll

Hard-shell defenders of President Nixon have long protested that a biased and vindictive press is obsessed by Watergate and is inflating the story out of all proportion. Most journalists have tended to dismiss these critics as highly partisan, but a recent opinion survey indicates that dissatisfaction among readers and viewers is far more widespread. The California Poll, a statewide survey founded in 1946 by Pollster Mervin D. Field and considered by many researchers to be representative of attitudes nationwide, shows that about half the public think that print and TV journalists pay too much attention to Watergate, and that a growing minority of Americans consider the coverage to be biased.

In the poll, conducted among 1,029 Californians selected at random, 51% said that there has been too much Watergate coverage, only 11% said that there has been too little, and 34% said that the amount has been adequate. In the same sampling, 44% of respondents considered Watergate coverage to be fair and unbiased, down from 55% in a similar poll last October; the percentage of Californians who found the coverage unfair and biased against the President rose from 17% in October to 31% in last month's survey.

The poll also established that the public view of press performance on Watergate is still colored by partisan leanings. Democrats absolved the news media of bias by a wide margin--56% to 21%; Republicans found the press unfair by 49% to 27%. Regardless of party affiliation, however, seven out of ten persons interviewed think that the news media "would work just as hard to try to uncover wrongdoing no matter who was President," virtually the same proportion as a California Poll taken in May 1973.

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