Where Do You Get Your News?

By Thomas Griffith

Newswatch

The idea that most Americans get most of their news from television has for some time been regarded as both true and alarming. With noble earnestness, Walter Cronkite used to plead that his half-hour script would not fill three-quarters of a single newspaper page and that distortion was "the inevitable result of trying to get ten pounds of news into the one-pound sack we are given each night." Speaking at a du Pont Awards ceremony at Columbia University in February, NBC's Tom Brokaw said that unfortunately many Americans "have come to rely on us as their primary and only source of information" and "we are inadequate to that task." It just may be the anchormen should relax a little.

In a special news-media issue of the Wilson Quarterly, Professor Lawrence W. Lichty at the University of Maryland challenges the idea that TV news is so dominant. Judging the argument involves assessing the nitpicking of several interested parties. Back in 1959 the Roper Organization, commissioned by the television industry, began asking this question, repeating it every two years: "Where do you usually get most of your news about what's going on in the world today"? The last time, in 1980, 64% cited TV, 44% newspapers, 18% radio, 5% magazines and 4% "talking to people." But that adds up to 135%! Well, multiple answers were permitted. A Roper spokesman says that "whatever the deficiencies" of the question, repeating it the same way each time provides a consistent pattern. Yes, but why can't Roper ask, "Well, which is it--do you get most of your news from TV or from the papers?" That would be forcing an answer and lead to impure results, says the Television Information Office, which hires Roper. Leo Bogart, a sociologist who heads the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, agrees that Roper measures the public's "perception" of where it gets the news, even if the public is wrong.

Professor Lichty takes the common-sense view that most people get their news from many sources. He marshals some competing statistics from Simmons Market Research, which print people pay for: 68% of U.S. adults read at least part of some newspaper every day. ("At least part" is another of those suspicious phrases.) Less than a third of U.S. adults watch TV news, local or national, on a given day--a figure Simmons says may be too low. And 31% of adults read one of the three newsmagazines, TIME, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.

Still, "perceptions" of TV dominance, erroneous or not, do have consequences. Bogart thinks it wrong for newspapers, particularly declining ones, to copy television's emphasis on personalities and features, to cut news items to car-radio brevity, or to favor routine "chicken dinner" local coverage. Major stories of national and international importance, he argues, have most impact on newspaper readers.

Newsgatherers at the networks despise much local TV news, and CBS's Dan Rather has had the temerity to say so. In the Wall Street Journal he noted that local stations have increased their news programming by 300%. "The real problem," Rather wrote, "is not too much news. It's too much chatter masquerading as news." Amen to that. Rather concluded, "But most Americans still rely on the network evening newscast for their information." Wrong perception, Dan.

As Professor Lichty puts it, "The widely accepted notion that Mr. Rather and his rivals each command a vast, devoted nightly following seems farfetched." Together the nightly newscasts on the three networks gather an audience of 50 million. It is a sizable number, even when split three ways, but does not add up to "most Americans." Besides, Lichty says, it is a fickle and fluctuating audience: "Only 1% of all 78.3 million American television households watch Rather as often as four or five nights a week." The Television Information Office disputes these figures, and counters with a Nielsen report that 4.2% of all TV homes watch Rather four or five times a week, not that much more impressive.

From all this stunting with statistics, two conclusions can be drawn. It is good that the networks are more serious than the local chatterers. But it is nice to learn that those golden network anchormen are not such awesome, dominating influences over us after all.

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