Judging the Fourth Estate: A TiME-Louis Harris Poll

PUBLIC criticism of newspapers is the shrillest and most widespread I have seen in 18 years. The public mood is uneasy, querulous, fearful." The words are those of Wallace Allen, managing editor of the Minneapolis Tribune, but the view is shared by many reporters, writers and editors. Television is also a target. After last summer's Chicago convention, the U.S. was plunged into debate over TV coverage of the riots. Did the cameramen and commentators deliberately distort their reportage in favor of the protesters and against the police? In a postmortem, NBC News Chief Reuven Frank wrote that not just "the intellectuals and upper middle brows" had turned against TV, "but the basic American audience, the most middle-class majority in history."

In a new survey for TIME, Louis Harris has undertaken a study of the public's confidence in the press, its trust and preference in news sources and its attitudes toward some of the more controversial issues covered by the media. The results indicate that although Americans are quick to criticize the way news is handled, underlying public trust in the nation's press and in its constitutional safeguards remains strong. Harris finds, in fact, that nearly two out of every three adults in his representative sample of 1,600 express the view that they are "better informed today than they were five years ago." But, Harris concludes, "this is not to say that there is a limitless blue-sky euphoria about the media. Each has its problems in communicating with the American people. Tucked beneath each encomium is a reservation of healthy skepticism."

Journalism in General

How Teddy Kennedy has been treated by the press was given particular attention in the survey. By a ratio of more than five to one, Americans agree that newspapers and newsmagazines have given Kennedy fair treatment; seven to one they say television has. The approbation is qualified however: fewer than one out of three will go so far as to say the media in general have been "very fair" in their Kennedy coverage. Not surprisingly, Harris found that the groups that generally support Kennedy --youth, Easterners, blacks and women --are more critical of the press; those who do not--the elderly, Midwesterners and Southerners, whites and men--tend to be more approving of the coverage.

The survey indicates that, with one surprising reservation, the public's favorite source of daily news is television. When asked to imagine having "only one source of news," nearly half of the Harris respondents opt for TV, as against the one-third who prefer newspapers. However, when Harris asked, "How upset would you be if your main news source were to become unavailable for a month?", the result was reversed: 44% said they would be "very upset" to lose their newspaper but only a third would be very upset over a one-month loss of their favorite television news broadcast.

Harris interviewers also questioned the selected sample about individual familiarity with recent news events. Eight out of ten Americans feel "very well-informed" about the Apollo moon program, and a sizable majority is equally familiar with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Fewer than half of those polled feel well-informed about the tragedy involving Kennedy at Chappaquiddick, racial disturbances and campus protests. At the bottom of the list, substantial numbers profess confusion over the trial of James Earl Ray, the war in Viet Nam and the Middle East crisis.

Newspapers

Of the nearly nine out of ten Americans who say that they read a newspaper regularly, a clear majority is convinced that the paper they read is "sometimes unfair, partial and slanted," though less than one in three make the specific charge that it represents "special" rather than "public" interests.

When the sensitive issue of whether newspapers are too easy on protesters is raised, opinions among educational, racial and age groups vary widely. Across the nation, slightly more readers think that papers are too easy rather than too tough, an assumption that increases among older citizens and among those who have completed no more than the eighth grade. Nearly half of all whites feel that protest coverage is too soft on the protesters, as against only three out of ten blacks who feel that way. Among readers with college degrees, only one in three believes that newspaper treatment of demonstrators has been too easy.

In other sensitive areas, newspapers are given a stronger vote of confidence. By nearly three to one, readers deny that papers are "too full of sex," and nearly three out of five say that papers are not "too full of violence." As for being "too easy on the Establishment," only one in four thinks newspapers are, though the college educated are nearly twice as strong in their indictment of newspaper establishmentarianism as those with no more than an eighth-grade education.

The closer readers are to the news that their papers cover, the survey indicates, the more they tend to believe it. Local news is trusted "very much" by 40% of the readers, state news by 31%. Only one in four is as trusting of the world news printed by the nation's press.

The Harris survey also reveals a substantial distrust of news that comes out of the nation's capital. Though a majority of newspaper readers endorse Washington reporters as "the best in the country," about three out of four of those questioned believe that "the real story in Washington is behind the scenes, and only a small part ever gets into the news." Only one in ten would like to see more Government censorship.

A strong strain of old-fashioned individualism runs through reader response to editorial pages. By nearly two to one, readers say that they trust news stories more than editorials, and only a bare majority say that they generally agree with the editorial stands of their papers.

Harris also discovered that there is virtually no national newspaper in the country. The nation's best-known paper, the New York Times, is familiar to only 30% of American readers, followed by the Wall Street Journal (28%), the National Observer (14%), the Washington Post (13%), and the Los Angeles Times (12%). In the area of confidence, the Wall Street Journal leads by a wide margin, with 55% of its readers expressing "very much trust" in that paper, compared with the 36% of New York Times and National Observer readers with high confidence in those papers.

Another surprising discovery was that nationally syndicated newspaper columnists do not make a very strong impression across the country. Drew Pearson is the most popular, with 7% of the nation's readers; various "advice" columnists as a group receive 5% of readers' responses. They are followed by Art Buchwald (4%), William F. Buckley Jr. (3%), James Reston (3%) and "gossip" columnists collectively (3%). Of all readers, only 16% cite any nationally syndicated favorite, while one in four names a local columnist.

On the whole, substantially more readers feel that they are getting more information from their newspapers today than those who feel they are getting less. What emerges from these findings, says Harris, "is a picture of a highly localized press, subject to fairly wide area-by-area differences in readership assessment. For, indeed, each newspaper is different in terms of the news mix, editorial outlook, and in its handling of the components of modern journalism."

Newsmagazines

The void left by the absence of a national newspaper appears to be partially filled by newsmagazines, according to Harris' findings. TIME and Newsweek are well known, particularly among the college-educated, and U.S. News & World Report is also familiar to those with college degrees. TIME is familiar to more than half of the public and to 77% of college graduates. Newsweek's familiarity is only slightly less. U.S. News is known to only 29% of the general public, but its readers give it the highest vote of confidence, with 46% saying that they "trust it very much." TIME receives a "high trust" rating from 42% of its readers, Newsweek 40% .

While the newsmagazines apparently constitute the only national written press and are rated extremely high for fairness and trust, the survey indicates that television has made the individual less dependent on them as primary sources of straight news. One out of three Americans says that he depends less on newsmagazines to get the latest news, compared with one in seven who relies on them more heavily. In view of the rising circulation of all three magazines mentioned, this finding indicates that readers turn to newsmagazines increasingly for background and interpretation of the news that they may hear or read elsewhere, and for the magazines' broader cultural features and special coverage.

Television

More than nine out of ten Americans say that they regularly watch TV news, though this percentage falls off among the least-and best-educated members of society. Its strongest swath cuts right down the middle, where TV news is most popular among the middle-aged and the middle-income and in medium-size communities.

NBC and CBS clearly dominate the nationwide news airwaves, splitting 70% of the regular viewing public evenly between them. ABC has a regular news viewership of only 13%. When asked to name their favorite TV newsmen, 46% readily volunteer Walter Cronkite, 45% name David Brinkley and 44% say Chet Huntley. After CBS' Eric Sevareid, who is known to 9% of America's viewers, all the rest are scattered.

In its reputation for fairness of coverage, television news also does better than newspapers. While a majority believes that newspapers are "sometimes unfair and slanted in news coverage," only a minority of one in three sees TV news this way. Nor is television accused of bowing to special interests as much as newspapers: only 12% compared with 29%.

Harris finds that "there is solid evidence that television news's 'sins' are much more likely to live after it." Of 29% who report they can recall a specific case of some medium being unfair to a particular group or individual, nearly three out of four remembered something they saw on television. More significantly, by a ratio of nearly three to one, viewers believe that "the TV camera can lie," a view that runs strongest among professional people, the college-educated and the young. When asked to give examples of unfair television coverage, one out of three mentioned the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and 21% cited race riots.

The American public takes television to task more harshly than newspapers for its portrayal of violence and sex. Nearly half of those surveyed leveled a "too full of violence" charge against television news v. only 38% against newspapers, and nearly one in three finds TV news too full of sex.

"Television has made a deep impact," Harris concludes after studying the figures, "but with personalization of news and a picture format, there is an ephemeral quality. The printed word seems to stick to people's ribs more than the audio or visual form of journalism, though television is difficult to match for immediacy and excitement."

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Clearly, criticisms of the press--most of which are dutifully reported by it --have alerted the public to its failings and fallibilities. Moreover, as the media become more responsive to the nation's social, urban and ecological ills, more and more Americans are measuring news coverage against their individual observations of the event or circumstance, a comparison that often generates hostility. "People don't really want it told like it is," says Professor Penn Kimball of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. "They want it told like they think it is." Or, as David Brinkley puts it, "There's an increasing displeasure with the state of affairs in this country--the people hear about it, tend not to like it, and want me to shut up. If you're dissatisfied, the first thing you do is turn against the media that bring it to you."

Skepticism of the American press is undoubtedly on the upswing, but the Harris survey clearly indicates that it remains within parameters of trust and confidence. "It's a healthy skepticism," says CBS News Chief Richard Salant. "As people grow more sophisticated, they come to realize that whether it's TV, newspapers, magazines or what, the truth is hard to come by."

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