But car salesmen are not the only professionals the public sees in this negative light. Rave Reviews Americans remain skeptical of the honesty and ethics of their elected officials. Opinion of News Professionals and Lawyers Ethics Steadily Declining The long-term trends of Gallup s honesty and ethics survey reveal a growing skepticism among the American public regarding the ethics of news professionals and lawyers. The three news professions surveyed all remain significantly lower than when they were first placed on the list. Two specific news professions that first appeared on the list in 1981, TV reporting and newspaper reporting, have also dipped significantly.
Lawyers are often the punch line to jokes regarding professional ethics and honesty.
For results based on the whole sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 3 percentage points.