CNN Partner's Polling Finds CNN Fair, Balanced

A lot of people think Fox News is too critical of President Obama. As headlines go, that bit of information -- the chief takeaway from this week's News Index Survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press -- is right up there with dog bites man.

More interesting, perhaps, is who's doing the asking. Pew's survey of 1,000 American adults was conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, a polling firm that works closely with Fox's main competitor, CNN. According to its website, "ORC is proud to be an official partner of CNN on the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll, conducting national, speech reaction, state and flash/overnight polls for the world's most trusted name in news."

And "the world's most trusted name in news" came out pretty well in this week's survey, wouldn't you know: While 29 percent of respondents said Fox is too tough on Obama, only 11 percent said the same about CNN (and 8 percent about MSNBC). Asked which networks are too easy on the president, 16 percent identified CNN -- roughly the same proportion as pointed to MSNBC, NBC or ABC. (Only 5 percent said Fox is too nice to Obama.)

Scott Keeter, Pew's director of survey research, says the partnership between CNN and ORC needn't prevent the latter from administering questions about the former to survey-takers.

"It's just not something we've given any thought to," he said when I called. "We write the questions. They don't have any control over the questions so there's no way they could influence either the selection of what we're going to ask about or the way it's worded. Their motivation, if they had one, to put a thumb on the scales would be irrelevant. They couldn't do it."