The latest survey by the Gallup organization shows just how dramatically polarized America has become. The survey asks people to rate various professions on how ethical and trustworthy they are. And the ones caught in the middle are journalists and, surprisingly, high school teachers.
The survey reinforces the divide between Republicans and Democrats that you see being played out in Washington with Republicans proving to be the most negative in their assessments. Virtually every profession shows a drop in approval, and the main driver — Republican opinion. Some might remember the infamous quote from vice president Spiro Angew.
Democrats versus Republicans
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Republicans (71%) rate journalists’ ethics and trustworthiness as low or very low. That’s twice as many as Independents (37%) and FIVE times the number of Democrats (15%). On the flip side of that, hardly any Republicans rate journalists high or very high (5%). Five times as many Independents give them that score (25%) and eight times as many Democrats (41%).
(The numbers above come from a PDF provided in the previous link. It provides the complete questions and responses. Those figures provide other perspectives on the article published by Gallup and show some of the most dramatic differences. You can download the PDF at the link.)
As I say, that may not be surprising. What is surprising, (bordering on shocking), is the difference between Republicans and Democrats in their rating of high school teachers. Only a third of the Republicans (36%) give the teachers high or very high ratings. Democrats more than double that number (77%), and a majority of Independents (51%) give the teachers high marks. Republicans are clearly split, for some reason, with nearly as many giving the teachers low marks (32%) as high, and a third who say they’re just “average” (32%).
The Two Sides
The differences become more distinct when the analysts at Gallup factor in Independents who “lean” Republican and those who “lean” Democratic. When those responses are taken into account, the highest disparity of any profession between the two sides is in the category of ‘high school teachers’ with a 36-point difference.
The second highest disparity is for journalists with, again, Democrats having a higher opinion of them than Republicans: 32 points higher.
So the next question is — which profession gets the highest marks from Republicans versus Democrats. The answer is police officers who get high marks from nearly two-thirds of the Republicans (62%) but only a little more than a third of the Democrats (38%). That’s a 24-point difference.
What tells you much more about the polarization is when you compare the two sides’ opinion on the various professions. Of the 18 professions included in the survey, Democrats scored twice as many professions positively (12) versus Republicans (6). Even more telling, when you compare the overall scores of those respective professions, Democrats gave higher marks (144 points) to those people than the Republicans (50) points.
And it’s almost funny but the main professions Republicans favored over Democrats seemed to reinforce the stereotype of the GOP: accountants, bankers, real estate agents and business executives. The two exceptions were the police and the clergy.
The Overall Picture
The top three professions in the latest survey (and historically) are nurses with four out of five people (79%) giving them high marks for honesty and ethics, followed by medical doctors (74%) and pharmacists (58%).
But that approval rating has declined over the past three years — and for the same reason that the fourth highest rated group — high school teachers — declined.
“The overall declines in the ethics ratings of nurses, medical doctors and pharmacists are driven by Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.”
— Gallup.
It is not much consolation to journalists who have been subjected to some vicious attacks in recent years by politicians — primarily Republican and primarily one person — but in the overall score, they are given more credit for honesty and trustworthiness than members of congress. The journalists’ score in the categories of high and very high is more than two times (23%) that of congress (9%). And on the opposite end of the scale, nearly two-thirds of the people surveyed (62%) say members of congress have low or very low ethics which is worse, but not much worse than the score for journalists (42%).
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For more perspective on the issue of ethics and various professions, you can go to this link:
And here are the “most highly reader INTERNATIONAL stories,” according to Gallup in 2022.
