Most every family has a crazy aunt who makes everyone very nervous at family reunions or holiday dinners by asking unnerving questions. She quizzes divorcées about current loves of their ex-spouses. She interrogates students regarding their report cards. She probes Dad’s investment losses for the past year. And she keeps asking too many of us how many pounds we’ve put on since last year.

The media now have a crazy aunt to worry about — Aunt Annenberg.

Recently, the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania started releasing comparative results of polls it conducted of 673 journalists and 1,500 American adults. Aunt Annenberg asked the journalists some especially nosy questions on topics including media profit motives, partisanship, ethics and accuracy.

The poll of adults is also creating some awkward discussions inside the media family, I would imagine. The most revealing quote comes from Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director the Annenberg Public Policy Center, who confesses that “the fact that a quarter of the public thinks (conservative radio talk-show star Rush) Limbaugh is a journalist is disturbing evidence that the public defines the word very differently from the way that most journalists do.”

There is no doubt that these two surveys provide the most comprehensive and “disturbing” evidence of media bias and motivations ever documented. For example, only 12 percent of the journalists polled said that the top priority of owners of new organizations is to provide the public with “factual, timely news coverage.” Two of three journalists polled said that profit considerations influence journalistic decisions to a “great extent” or “moderate extent.” Only 1 in 3 journalists (32 percent) describes the “ethical practices” of journalists as being “very good.”

Despite those misgivings about their profession and its enterprises, journalists appear to believe that most reporting is accurate. Eighty-six percent of journalists polled said that news organizations get their facts straight, while just 11 percent say they are “often inaccurate.”

But this question is troublesome. It forced journalists to choose from just two extremes: getting the facts straight or being often inaccurate. Annenberg should have allowed journalists to choose whether their colleagues get the facts straight “almost always, most of the time, just some of the time or almost never.” From the rest of the results, I suspect that few journalists would say that reporters almost always get the facts straight.

What was the purpose behind this survey? I would tend to believe that Jamieson and Annenberg polling guru Adam Clymer, formerly of The New York Times, are interested in exploring a new, alternative form of journalism that seems to be gaining adherents. One question probed this alternative model directly by asking, “Do you think it is a good thing or a bad thing for the American people if some news organizations have a decidedly political point of view in their coverage of the news?” While almost half (47 percent) of the journalists characterized such a practice as a “very bad thing,” that means that the other half might be open to this alternative model. And because journalists and the public already acknowledge that such bias exists, why not get it out in the open?

Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have enjoyed a surge in popularity as a news source even when there is compelling evidence of some conservative bias on their parts. Limbaugh even happily admits it. He suggests that every news reporter should admit his biases. That may be where journalism is headed.

Think of a “campaign-finance model” of journalism. We don’t ban campaign contributions by corporate PACs to candidates for Congress, but we do demand disclosure. Similarly, we shouldn’t ban avowed liberals or conservatives from reporting the news, but their reports should be openly bylined with their appropriate persuasion.

Initially, most journalists will eschew this model, but it’s probably in their future, so I’d advise reporters to start preparing disclosure statements. A nosy aunt will have questions.

Hill is director of Hill Research Consultants, a Texas-based firm that has polled for GOP candidates and causes since 1988.