A majority of Americans say the country’s news media outlets are politically biased, inaccurate and calloused, according to a Pew Research Center poll released on Thursday. The Washington-based organization refers to itself as a nonpartisan “fact tank.”

According to the poll, there has been an across-the-board dive in public approval of news organizations. A 1985 study by the same organization (then known as the Times Mirror Center) found opinions of the news media to be significantly higher.

“Two decades ago, public attitudes about how news organizations do their job were less negative,” Pew reported. “Most people believed that news organizations stood up for America … a majority believed that news organizations got the facts straight.”

Internet news consumers, who represent one quarter of all Americans, slammed U.S. news companies. Over two thirds said news organizations don’t care about the people they report on, 64 percent said they were politically biased and 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate.

Just over half said the news media was guilty of “failing to stand up for America.”

Criticism of the news media was lower among those who primarily used newspapers and television as their news sources, but when combined with Internet users, the percentages still added up to more than half of Americans calling the news organizations uncaring, biased and inaccurate.

Paris-based afp published an article on the report Thursday, but the U.S. media has been slower to pick up on the story.

For more news and analysis regarding the American news media, read the March/April 2004 cover story “The Media War Against the United States” and “Where Media Bias is Leading Us” from the editor in chief.