Message From Michael 
September 15, 2010
PEW BIENNIAL REPORT ON NEWS CONSUMPTION
THE OLD HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY QUESTION: Or to use the other hackneyed expression – I have some good news and I have some bad news. From the Pew Research Center’s People and the Press report on news consumption which they produce every two years. The good news is that Americans are spending more time ‘with the news’ than they have since the mid-1990’s – 70 minutes on average a day. Or so say the report authors. According to them, news over digital platforms is ‘more than making up’ for what the report says are ‘modest declines’ in traditional media. As to the bad news… well, let me count the ways.
The percentage of people who only ‘graze’ for news, getting their news ‘from time to time’ has increased every time the report has been made, until now more than half (57%) say that’s how they get their news. Nearly two thirds of the public (62%) and three quarters of identified Internet users (76%) ‘happen across news’ while actually online for other reasons. The percentage of people who regularly seek news, or more accurately, go looking for it at regular times has declined steadily over the last four years, until now a little more than a third (38%) actually make time for news. And even though the percentage of people with TiVo’s and DVR’s has increased to almost half (45%) from a third (35%) two years ago, only a quarter (24%) use it to record the news – about the same as the last survey (22%). A third of the news-consuming people (31%) use search engines to get their news. That’s double the percentage of four years ago (14%) and up significantly from the last survey two years ago (19%).
Want more? Only one out of seven (14%) of the 3,000-plus people surveyed could answer four basic news questions correctly. Even more disturbing, one out of seven (15%) got all four questions wrong. The worst offenders? No, my skeptical-liberal friends, not Fox news watchers. They actually did better than average. The worst offenders are the people watching the network evening news and the network morning ‘news’ shows. Morning show watchers were in fact more likely to get them all wrong (13%) than all right (9%). And the partisanship that people decry in
Somehow in all this, Center Director Tom Rosenstiel with the Project for Excellence in Journalism sees a silver lining. He argues in a commentary at the end of the report that we’re entering a new phase in news consumption where people are not just replacing the old technologies with new but using the new technologies in new ways. He notes that use of traditional media has stabilized or “declined only slightly” in the last few years. Traditional media (newspapers, television, radio) account for 57 minutes of that 70 minutes spent each day. It’s online news use that has added the other 13 minutes. Specifically, out of that total 70 minutes a day – 32 is spent with TV news, 15 with radio, 13 online and 10 with newspapers. Rosenstiel makes the point that people go to the different media sources and media platforms for different reasons. He cites a report earlier this year by the center which made the point that the media is now ‘portable, personalized and participatory.’ He says that while “the medium may not quite be the message… the medium does make a difference (and that) different platforms serve us differently.”
But if you’re in newspapers, the glass is definitely half empty. If you’re in television, the glass is maybe half full. If you’re CNN, the glass is a sippy cup with a leak in it. The percentage of people who say they read a newspaper yesterday has dropped to a third (31%) which the report says is the lowest percentage in two decades. As disturbing as that may be to my newspaper brethren, what is probably more disturbing is that the percentage of total newspaper readership (meaning both print and online) has dropped to 37%, from 39% two years ago and 43% four years ago. But what may cause the lovers of ink-stained dead wood to want to curl up in the fetal position is that the percentage of people under 50 using the print version has dropped by half – from 29% to 15%. For my television brethren, the news is definitely better with the percentage of people watching TV news yesterday holding steady at 58% -- a percentage that has held steady for a decade. Add to that, people spend more time with television news – 55 minutes, compared to 38 minutes online and 37 minutes with a newspaper. So, crank up the promo machine – more people spend more time watching news on television than any other medium.
As to the CNN glass, well… Everybody is already familiar with the ratings picture – with Fox scoring higher, although as I’ve pointed out several times, CNN wins the online ratings war by an even larger margin than Fox wins the TV ratings war. But there has been a role reversal in people who call themselves regular viewers. A decade ago, CNN could claim the lead, with 21% saying they are regular viewers versus 17% for Fox. In the last four surveys it’s been a dead heat, but in the latest survey Fox has the lead, with 23% saying they are regular viewers versus 18% for CNN. But that’s not the worst of it for CNN. It’s seen a drop in the news viewers under 30, a decline in the heavier-than-normal-news viewers over 50 and, although it may not be a demographic they want, Fox also has a substantial lead in the way-way-way-heavier news viewers over 65 – 30% to CNN’s 21%. It gets worse… well, for CNN, not Fox. Republican viewership for Fox has increased to 40% from 36% in the 2008 survey which was a presidential election year. That has helped Fox maintain its audience size while CNN, which once had as many Republican viewers as Fox, continues to see a decline in these viewers. Both networks have seen a decline in Democratic viewership – six points for Fox but eight points for CNN. And Independents are going away from CNN and to Fox.
And, oh, yes, that idea CNN recently embraced of getting controversial personalities to bolster its viewership – Piers Morgan replacing Larry King. Let me point out another factoid from the report. That 23% of Fox viewers who are regular viewers is more than double the percentage of people who identify themselves as regular viewers of Bill O’Reilly (10%), more than triple the percentage who identify themselves as regular viewers of Glenn Beck (7%) and four times Sean Hannity (6%). What is far and away CNN’s strength (a little positive for my CNN friends) is that two thirds (64%) of its regular viewers turn to it for the latest headlines. That’s the highest of any news sources, including the network evening news (59%) and Fox (44%). And if you appreciate a little black humor (depending on your point of view), a fourth (24%) of Beck’s viewers say they turn to him because of his ‘in depth reporting’ and a fifth of O’Reilly’s regular audience (20%) and Sean Hannity’s regular audience (21%) turn to them for the same reason – in depth reporting. That is more than their own network (Fox – 11%) and CNN (10%) and equal to or more than NPR (20%), Sunday Talk shows (19%) and news magazines (23%), but lower than the Wall Street Journal (37%) and New York Times (33%).
Another – oh, yes, moment. The New York Times also has the dubious distinction of being the only news source in the survey in which a greater percentage (21%) “believe almost nothing” it reports as “believe all or most” of what it reports (20%). Here’s another promo moment for one news organization. The most credible news source in the survey? – 60 Minutes with a third (33%) believing all or most of what its correspondents tell us and only a tenth (11%) believing almost nothing. Local TV news can claim the #2 spot with 29% believing all or most of what they report, but more importantly maybe, only 8% saying they believe almost nothing. That was the lowest score – or best score, depending on how you phrase it – of any news source. CNN (29%) and NPR (28%) are in the same believability range and the same ‘un-believability’ range (13% and 16%). The ‘daily newspaper’ had a much lower ‘believe all’ rating (21%) than local news and a much higher ‘believe nothing’ rating (14%). And Fox was slightly, and not statistically significantly, behind CNN in ‘believe all’ (27%) and the same in ‘believe nothing’ (22%). It should be noted that the partisanship cited earlier is further reinforced by the believability scale of Republicans and Fox (41% believe most) and Democrats and CNN (40% believe most).
About half of Americans (52%) say they see a lot of bias in news coverage with Republicans (62%) seeing more bias than Democrats (47%) or Independents (53%). And most Americans (57%) see some news sources as more trustworthy, but a breakdown of the numbers, again show partisanship driving that as much as journalism, it seems. Most Americans (62%) also say they prefer to get news from sources that don’t have a particular point of view, as opposed to the quarter (25%) who say they want news that shares their point of view. And, yet again, partisan political views play into the perceptions. For example, almost as many people watching Hardball watch it because it shares their point of view (44%) as want it to have no particular point of view (45%). Hannity’s show is in the same range (40% shared point of view versus 45% no particular point of view); Beck (39% shared and 46% not); Rachel Maddow (40% and 46%).
As always, I have only skimmed the surface of the report – 145 pages condensed to less than 2,000 words. So, yes, we will have more in a future Message. I should also note that much of the thrust of the report is on the ‘new media’ aspects of news consumption. That is what Rosenstiel focuses on and why he sees some upside. I have focused on news use in general, but believability and credibility in particular. So, there are still questions of how people are integrating the different platforms into their news lives. All those different sources translates into the fact that four out of five people (83%) get news “as part of their daily lives.” That’s the good news. But a fifth (17%) told the survey takers that they got “no news” yesterday. That percentage has been pretty consistent over the years. But when you look at the younger audience, the percentage gets more dramatic. A quarter (27%) of those under 30 got “no news” yesterday and nearly a third (31%) of those between the ages of 18 and 24 got “no news” yesterday. So, yes, I still question whether the report indicates a different use of different news sources or a declining use of different information sources. Or, put another way, it is a question of whether news is being integrated into their lives or whether news is important to their lives. As the cliché goes… stay tuned.
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