Pew Center Survey Shows Why Media is Losing Audience

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a study in June that shows why the traditional media is losing its audience. The study is of the public's views toward coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. Here are some interesting statistics: by a 76% to 19% margin the public wants more coverage of the positions of the candidates' position on the issues; by a margin of 54% to 39% the public wants more coverage of the candidates who are not the frontrunners; and by a margin of 57% to 36% the public wants less coverage of which candidate is leading in fundraising.

Note that wants the public wants is consistent with the fact that voters have to make a choice in the 2008 presidential election. They want the facts that are important to them in making that choice. Yet, the media, in its wisdom, keeps giving them what they don't seem to want: more coverage of frontrunners and how much money those frontrunners have raised.

Thomas Patterson, a professor who studies the media and how it covers politics, wrote a book in the early nineties called Out of Order. In that book he presented evidence on how the media gets caught up in the "game" theory of politics and presents most of its coverage in terms of who is ahead, who is behind, who is coming up, and who is going down. Excessive coverage of polls and fundraising efforts is a result of such a world view. He claimed that the media looked at politics from a "campaign schema."

Patterson wrote that the public, on the other hand, looks at campaigns from a "governing schema." The public wants to know who will make the best decisions in public office. The public wants information that they can use in making that decision.

If a business keeps failing to give its customers or potential customers what they want, they eventually go elsewhere. For a long time, customers of the media didn't have anywhere else they could turn, then along came the Internet.

Media types such as David Broder decry the Internet and claim that bloggers are ruining American politics by polarizing politics but almost never examine whether they are giving the public what it wants in terms of political coverage. Such refusal to engage in self-examination is a sign of arrogance in any profession or industry and the media is no exception. Until media personnel start to critically question whether they are providing readers and viewers what they want in terms of covering political campaigns, they will continue to lose their audience to the Internet.

Pew Research Report: Fox News Viewers Not Well Informed

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read a report that appeared on Editor & Publisher's website about a recent report on news consumers released by the Pew Center for the Study of the People and the Press. According to the article, "Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report".
The report goes to note that: "Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers."

When Democratic candidates are asked why they won't appear on Fox News, they should cite to this report. The role of a news organization is to inform its users. Clearly Fox News is not fulfilling its role. Why? Because it cares more about pushing Republican talking points than informing its viewers. No Democrat should be heistant about pointing out this failure and using such a failure as a reason not to appear on Fox News programs.

Fewer Voters Identifying with Republicans

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read an article in the Washington Post about a study that was recently released by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It shows that while 50% of the public identifies with the Democratic Party only 35% identify with the Republican Party. The study also shows that the public is trending away from conservative solutions to problems and towards acceptance of a more active role for government. (You can read the Pew Research Center's summary of the study by clicking here: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=312)

10 Ten Words Used to Describe Bush

The following is from a very recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. In this survey, the respondents were asked to choose just one word to describe President Bush. Note that Incompetent and Arrogant made the first two, and that out of the top ten words, five were negative and five were position. Mary Kaplan of the Huffington Post has a article about how the responses to this particular question has changed over the last three years and he also provides a link to the actual poll in a pdf file. You can read Kaplan's column by clicking on the link in this entry's title.

Please tell me what one word best describes your impression of George W. Bush. Tell me just the ONE best word that describes him.

February 2007

34 Incompetent
25 Arrogant
25 Honest
19 Good
19 Idiot
13 Integrity
13 Leader
11 Strong
11 Stupid
10 Ignorant