| PEJ "State
of The American News Media 2005" can be found here.
2004 survey. What follows are a few of the news stories about the survey. |
Washington Post coverage. New York Times coverage. Poynter coverage. Boston Globe coverage.
Annual 'State of Media' Study Finds Newspapers Slipping, Facing Cutbacks
By Joe Strupp
Published: March 13, 2005 9:00 PM ET
NEW YORK
Newspapers are still offering readers the widest range of coverage and the
"deepest, most balanced stories," but they lost their audience at a
greater rate in 2004, according to a new study on the state of newsgathering,
which also determined that the pressure for larger revenues is leading to even
more newsroom cutbacks.
The study, "The State of the American News Media, 2005," was
released from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research institute
linked with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and funded
by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
"Despite undeniable strengths, 2004 was a tough year for the newspaper
industry, and it isn't because people don't want to read," Project
Director Tom Rosenstiel said. "It is increasingly clear, newspapers need
to see themselves as in the news business, not in the paper and ink business,
and to embrace new technology as the ally of the depth and breadth that print
once offered."
The study contends that "the news industry is taking the same cautious
pay-as-you-go approach to the Internet that seems likely to cede ground to
non-journalism competitors," according to a report summary. "Even
though online audiences are growing, 62% of Internet journalists said their
newsrooms have suffered recent cutbacks, almost twice the 37% of national
print, TV and radio journalists to report that their newsrooms have suffered
cutbacks."
U.S. daily newspaper circulation, which has declined by about one-percent per
year since 1990, continued to fall at that rate in 2004, "and that
doesn't include 250,000 in phantom circulation that will be written off due to
scandals that hit the industry last year," the report added.
The study adds that hard times are almost certain to translate into more
newsroom cutbacks in 2004, once the accounting is finished, following another
500 in newsroom job losses in 2003, the latest year for which data is
available.
At the same time, the study shows, the news industry still earned profits of
more than 22%, according to analyst estimates, and that is expected to rise to
above 23% in 2005. "That ability to generate high profits can also be a
crutch, if Wall Street does not allow the industry to reinvest some of that
money into new technology and building new audiences," the study's
authors stated.
Only three sectors of the news media - ethnic, alternative, and online -
continued to see steady audience growth. In 2003 alone, the latest year for
which there is data, 14 new Spanish language newspapers were launched.
"And while online media does not generally appear to be cannibalizing the
old, there are some exceptions to that," the report stated. "One is
that people who go to online newspaper sites appear to be spending less time
reading newspapers in print.
The study offered an overview on the state of the news media landscape and
then provides detailed chapters on nine different sectors of the
press--newspapers, magazines, network television, cable television, local
television, the Internet, radio, the ethnic press and alternative media.
For each sector, it examined six areas: audience, economics, ownership,
newsroom investment, and public attitudes. It puts in one place all the major
data about journalism-plus significant original research. Among the findings:
• The notion of growing partisan media has been overstated. While this new
"Journalism of Affirmation" is growing, audiences are not splitting
along ideological lines. Only cable and talk radio have done so. The audiences
of most media reflect the population fairly well-except for age.
•Cable news is measurably thinner in its reporting than broadcast news.
Cable stories rely on fewer and less transparent sources, contain more
journalistic opinion and reflect fewer viewpoints.
•There is little sign the major news web sites are taking advantage of the
technology of the Internet. Less than a third of lead stories on news sites
studied included video links or allowed users to sort through data.
•Network news faces the biggest moment of transitional change in 2005 that
it has faced since the 1980s, when a new generation of anchors and a new
pressure for profitably changed the face of the networks.
•Morning news is becoming the financial engine of the networks. While
evening news audiences continued to decline in 2004, morning audiences were
flat. ABC's Good Morning America was growing, while NBC's Today Show was
declining. Only the first 20 minutes of morning news tend to contain
traditional news about significant events.
"The news is moving from being an organized, prepared lecture to a
free-flowing conversation, with all the advantages and disadvantages that
implies," Rosenstiel added. "The process is more open, but,
paradoxically, it is also more prone to manipulation by those who want to
shape public opinion. The cases of the government hiring commentators and
creating faux web sites are part of this phenomenon."
The study can be accessed online at www.stateofthemedia.org
Study Finds No Media Bias on War, Hits Fox As Most One-Sided
By E&P Staff
Published: March 13, 2005 9:00 PM ET
NEW YORK
The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s “State of the American News
Media 2005,” released late Sunday, disputes charges of antiwar media bias,
but found that President Bush received more “negative” coverage in the
2004 campaign than did Senator John F. Kerry.
And it determined that Fox News was the most one-sided of all major outlets.
In fact, the idea that Americans are engaged in "partisan" news
consumption isn't supported by the research. With the exception of Republicans
who prefer Fox, most media use mirrors the general population, the study
found.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is affiliated with the Columbia
University School of Journalism. The study was funded by the Pew Charitable
Trusts.
The Washington-based Project examined more than 2000 stories on the war in
Iraq and found that 25% of the stories were negative and 20 percent were
positive. “The majority of stories were just news," said the
Project’s director, Tom Rosenstiel.
Fox News Channel was twice as likely to be positive than negative, while CNN
and MSNBC were evenhanded.
An analysis of campaign coverage found, in a more limited study, that Bush
received more negative, and less positive, coverage than Kerry during the fall
campaign. Rosenthiel thinks this may be partly because a president in office
always gets more criticism, and the setbacks in the war added to this.
There are clear differences between Fox versus its cable rivals, the study
found. Fox News stories contain more sources and reveal more about them than
those of its competitors, but its stories are also more one-sided and are more
opinionated.
Indeed, Fox journalists offer their own opinion in seven out of ten stories on
the news channel, versus less than one in ten stories on CNN and one in four
on MSNBC.
Report: Non-traditional media gain ground, consumers
(USA Today, 3/14/05)
Now, local news anchors "can no longer say 'As we told you yesterday,' because chances are people weren't watching yesterday," says Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which releases its second annual State of the News Media report today.
The same phenomenon is affecting network news and newspapers, where viewers and readers are turning increasingly — and more regularly — to the Internet and cable for their news.
The report finds that most news consumers now get their news from four different types of media in a typical week.
"We as journalists need to communicate in an entirely different way if readers or viewers are only with us occasionally," he says. "We can't assume that they are loyal or that they trust us because they use us on a regular basis. We have to forge an entirely new relationship with people who are really no longer friends but acquaintances."
The report finds that, with the exception of cable news and talk radio, the notion that consumers have retreated to ideological corners for their news is exaggerated; Democrats and Republicans both get their news from similar outlets.
The report found that cable news stories are more thinly reported than other news media, and that a majority of the reporting on Iraq (55%) was largely neutral. But it also found that President Bush got three times the negative coverage of Sen. John Kerry (36% vs. 12%).
The 600-page report also finds that the traditional "journalism of verification" — in which reporters check facts — is ceding ground to a new "journalism of assertion," in which information is offered on radio and cable talk shows and via Internet bloggers, with little or no attempt to verify the facts.
One of the consequences is that, increasingly, citizens can no longer agree on basic facts "because everyone is consuming their own kind of personal mix of media. The chances that we know the same thing, even if we're sitting in an office in a cubicle next to each other, is less than it used to be," Rosenstiel says.
This is a dangerous development, says Joe Angotti, former NBC News executive who now teaches journalism at Northwestern University.
"Blogs and 'so's your mother'-style talk shows are distorting news in America beyond what anyone could have imagined 10 years ago," he says. "The public is finding it more difficult than ever to distinguish between legitimate news and unverified drivel. The problem is that most news consumers don't realize that mainstream media reporters work within strict policies and guidelines that these other outlets don't require."
Robert Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs says that those who blame this new form of journalism on technology — the Internet — ignore misgivings about traditional media that the public has harbored for years.
It started in the '60s and '70s with Vietnam and Watergate, when journalists "decided they had a larger role to play in politics and society," he says. "They weren't just telling people what was going on. They were refereeing among the various contenders for influence by telling us who is telling the truth, who is lying and what the truth is. Once you start doing that, you have created journalism of assertion."
Lichter says traditional media were able to operate that way for decades because "they had no competition. The politicians could yell and scream, but journalists could say, 'We're the public tribunes. We have the constitutional right to tell the public that you are lying.'
"Now the 'right' that professional journalists asserted in the '60s is being claimed by bloggers. Journalistic arrogance is coming back to roost."
Rosenstiel says the media have to carve out a new role for themselves. Instead of being so-called gatekeepers of information — deciding what the public needs or does not need to know — traditional media may have to evolve into "authenticators, to tell people: 'What here in this increasingly crazy world can I trust?' It's easier said than done."
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