Whose News Do You Use?

RALEIGH – Whose news do you use?

As I was preparing for a presentation at last Friday’s Newspaper Academy over at the UNC-Chapel Hill J-school, I reread a poll conducted last summer by the invaluable folks at the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. If there is a more recent, similarly comprehensive study of American news consumption, I haven’t run across it. The Pew survey is full of interesting trends and insights about trends in print, broadcast, and Internet journalism. In no particular order, here are some of the data I found most intriguing:

• For all the talk about a steady decline in newspaper readership, its slope looks modest compared to the huge drop-off in broadcast-news viewership, both local and network. In 1993/1994 (two different surveys are combined here for baseline data), 77 percent of Americans said they watched local TV news. Sixty percent watched one of the big-three network newscasts (CBS, NBC, or ABC). Slightly fewer, 58 percent, read newspapers, while 47 percent listened to radio news programs. By 2006, newspapers had fallen 18 points to a 40 percent share, and radio 11 points to a 36 percent share. But look at TV – a 23 point drop to 54 percent for local news, and an astonishing 32-point drop to 28 percent for network news.

What went up? Cable news, to 34 percent of Americans saying that watch it “regularly,” and online news, to 31 percent. In the latter case, most of the material Internet users consume is still generated by newspapers, which readers get either from newspaper sites or from wire-service versions. Newspapers have a problematic business model but their content is still widely consumed. News departments at TV networks are the ones losing their relevance – particularly CBS and ABC, which lack NBC’s additional distribution channels of cable (MSNBC and CNBC) and the top-ranked Internet news source, MSNBC.com.

• Overall consumption of news has dropped among Americans during this period, but most of the decline occurred during the 1990s. The number of respondents saying they consumed some kind of news every day was 90 percent in 1994, but since 2000 it has bounced up and down around about 83 percent. As I noted, the mix is quite different – TV way down, online way up, newspapers and radio down some.

• There are clear and growing partisan and ideological preferences in news-media consumption. Outlets whose audiences skew strongly or moderately Republican include, naturally, the Rush Limbaugh Show, talk radio more generally, and Fox News. National Public Radio, CNN, and MSNBC skew Democratic. However, the ideological breakdowns of daily newspaper readers (37 percent conservative, 22 percent liberal, 35 percent moderate), local TV news (38 percent conservative, 19 percent liberal, 36 percent moderate), and network TV news (35 percent/20 percent/38 percent) do not differ appreciably from the ideological breakdown of the poll sample (36 percent/21 percent/35 percent). Moreover, people can get carried away thinking that only conservatives watch Fox or only liberals listen to NPR. About 45 percent of Fox News viewers are moderates or liberals. Conservatives and liberals each make up the same share, 28 percent, of NPR listeners – though that’s probably true more at drive time than at other, more chatty times on the program schedule.

• Pew also tested the knowledge of news consumers by asking them which party controlled Congress at the time, who the secretary of state was, and who the president of Russia was. “Judged by their answers,” the pollsters wrote, “the most informed audiences belong to the political magazines, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, the O’Reilly Factor, news magazines, and online news sources.” Before the nutroots’ collective head explodes, it’s fair to point out that NPR listeners and Daily Show viewers weren’t far behind in news knowledge.

Partisans and ideologues (sure, I’m one of the latter) should certainly lay off the accusations of ignorance or even stupidity directed at their political rivals. The Pew data clearly reveal a general public that is somewhat less engaged in hard-news consumption than before, but this public contains hard cores of both Rs & Ds who follow news closely, gather it from multiple sources, and are reasonably well-informed.

Particularly if they read, subscribe to, or listen to Carolina Journal.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.