A bad week for US News Industry

It's been a tough news week for U.S. news outlets and journalists.  Of course, by now most of us have heard the main headline-grabbers - Brian Williams being called out for "elaborating" his account of being under fire in Iraq and his subsequent suspension from his position as Managing Editor and anchor of the NBC Nightly News, and Jon Stewart announcing that he will be leaving Comedy Central's The Daily Show.
As NBC now formally investigates a growing number of allegations that Williams had sensationalized and/or exaggerated his personal involvement in other news stories (Katrina, etc.), most journalists and pundits feel that he has so damaged his credibility that he's unlikely to return in a senior news position.  And while one anchor is being punished for sensationalizing and manipulating "the truth" in his news coverage, Jon Stewart, who made his career from sensationalizing and manipulating his coverage of news stories, said he'd had enough.
Stewart was increasingly being challenged over whether he slanted stories and left important elements out in his efforts to sensationalize stories and to challenge guests on his program.  Stewart has long held that his show was satire and thus should not be held to the same standard as traditional news, although he also wanted the imprimatur of news for his program.
One consequence of the two announcements has been a level of self-examination within the news business over just how important credibility and straight factual coverage is, or should be, for both reporters and news outlets.  (And the somewhat facetious suggestion making the rounds that Brian Williams should just take over for Jon Stewart - where he wouldn't be expected to be objective and honest)
A less controversial, and more disheartening, story was last night's announcement that CBSNews' Bob Simon had been killed in a car crash in New York City.  Simon was a passenger in a limo whose driver apparently lost control, and was hit by another car.
On a slightly lighter note, a local TV news crew from San Francisco were assaulted and robbed of their equipment as they were wrapping up after a live remote.  And that robbery and attack was only the latest in a growing number of attacks on TV news crews in the San Francisco area.  The situation was so bad that for a while some news stations hired security for their remote crews.

Added: This week has also seen the release of the latest World Press Freedom Report, which states that 2014 saw a "drastic decline" in press freedoms - and that respect for journalists and press freedom saw declines in two-thirds of the countries in the world.

And while the debate of how honest and credible news should be continued, the reputation of major news outlets was taking flack from other recent events. First, a continuing litany of complaints from the Washington press corps of a lack of access and transparency from the Executive Branch (and most notably from the White House), to allegations of blatant efforts to manipulate pool coverage reporting and spy on reporters.  Add to that the President's recent habit of ignoring major news outlets in favor of politicized web outlets and talk shows in the granting of interviews, and you have major news outlets questioning their role and importance.
Then came a story in the New York Observer about an activist who outlined how he intentionally manipulated media coverage.

The unspoken conspiracy... that exists between journalists and those seeking publicity is very real. If you have a story that provokes—real or not—they have the time. Give them the promise of traffic and a little plausible denial and you’re in.

In the story, the activist provides a blueprint for how to plant and hype a story, essentially through astroturfing controversy and building "growing concern" through social media.

Such a revelation would normally be dismissed, especially by self-proclaimed "elite" news outlets, which would claim that while such activities might catch their attention, the stories would still be subjected to rigourous fact-checking and reviews to ensure that the resulting stories complied with their normal standards of objective reporting.  The much-vaunted "layers and layers" of review position, however, took a big hit with the recent UVA rape story - which very quickly and publicly unraveled, but only after the initial (now thoroughly discredited) story had been unquestioningly reprinted by a large number of news outlets.  Meanwhile, the argument that journalistic norms are applied consistently is now taking a hit as stories about potential GOP presidential candidates' history in high school and college are actively being investigated and challenged by major newspapers - newspapers who uniformly argued that it was improper to look at the backgrounds of Democratic Presidential candidates in recent election cycles.
And NBC's current concern with credibility and objectivity seems somewhat hypocritical, given the behavior of its cable news channel (MSNBC) - identified as the most blatantly partisan news source by Pew Research.

All of this is feeding the American news-consuming public's increasingly critical opinion of traditional news outlets, and may be part of their increasing reliance on online sources for news.

Sources - Bob Simon of '60 Minutes' Bob Simon killed in car crash, New York Post
KTVU news crew attacked, robbed in Hayward, SFGate
EXCLUSIVE: How This Left-Wing Activist Manipulates the Media to Spread His Message, New York Observer


Freedom Of Press Witnesses 'Drastic Decline' Globally Amid Emerging Threats To Journalists, International Business Times

Edit track: Added brief paragraph on World Press Freedom report, along with source link.

Pew reminder: Americans don't like what their news organizations are becoming

The Pew Research Center recently released a "Fact Tank" of 20 research highlights - a couple of which suggest that Americans are losing faith in their news organizations - or at least are becoming less valued among U.S. adults.

About two-thirds (65%) say news organizations focus on unimportant things.  Even higher numbers say that news media are often inaccurate and try to cover up their mistakes.  Three-quarters say news media are often influenced by powerful people and organizations and tend to favor one side.   More than half say news organizations are politically biased (58%) and that they don't care about the people they report on (59%).

In addition, 38% say journalists are less important because there are other sources for news and information, and only 29% say journalists contribute "a lot" to society.

Nearly one-third (31%) of people say they no longer use a particular news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they want and have grown accustomed to getting.  Those who report no longer using what had been a regular news source overwhelmingly (66.2%) indicate that the stories being less complete and valuable as a reason for their change.  Even among those who haven't yet stopped using a news organization, more than half (53%) say that news stories are less complete and valuable.

Results like these should serve as a wake-up call to U.S. news organizations that they're not doing the job that news consumers want and expect.  However, most of the major news organizations in America today seem to be pursuing goals other than journalism, so I won't be surprised to see these numbers grow, and reliance on traditional news outlets to decline.

Source -  20 facts from Pew Research Center,  Pew Research Center Report
Amid Criticism, Support for Media's 'Watchdog' Role Stands Out,  Pew Research Center for the People & the Press research report.
Americans Show Signs of Leaving a News Outlet, Citing Less Information,  Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism report.

(edited to remove unneeded white space)

Admitting Bias (at last)

The fall ratings season is nigh, and with it the new network schedules.  Fox is tinkering with its prime time talkers line-up, and it looks like MSNBC will be getting the "relaunch" promised by Executive Editor Richard Wolffe.  A visit to their website at msnbc.com gives you an initial choice between nbc.com, and msnbc.com - "It's what progressives have been waiting for."

I do have to congratulate the whole Comcast-NBCUniversal conglomerate for its (almost) honesty.  The (almost) part comes from the implication in the announcement that this is a new focus, with the implication that they were just another honest and impartial news agency before that.  That fiction was pretty well demolished by the network's performance in the last U.S. Presidential election campaign. 

According to the Pew Research Center, 85% of MSNBC's "news hole" was opinion or commentary, a stark contrast with the roughly 50/50 split of CNN and Fox.  (That it's so high for the others is another problem altogether). And in the last week before the election, MSNBC had not a single positive storyline about Mitt Romney (R), and not a single negative storyline about President Barack Obama (D).  As one conservative critic quipped at the time "MSNBC is everything Progressives imagine Fox to be."

One of the problems you face when addressing "bias" in news and journalism is that most people define bias in coverage as perspectives that don't match their own, rather than objectivity or fairness in coverage, so it will be interesting to see how the industry treats MSNBC's going public with it's focus/slant/bias.  It will also be interesting to see if there will be a call for a now admittedly non-news channel to be denied the standard "news" exemption, so that it will be considered to be providing in-kind contributions to the Democrat Party.  Democrats have tried that argument with several conservative talk radio programs recently (thankfully unsuccessfully so far - the First Amendment should protect all political speech, not just the speech you agree with).  Conservatives might be tempted to try it - after all, they do tend to believe in equal treatment under the law - but shouldn't (that news exemption is really broad). 

On the other hand, I'd welcome such a move, not to silence MSNBC, but as a starting point for some serious reconsideration of just how broadly we've come in expanding what is considered as "news" in terms of the exemption, and how narrowly some propose to define it in other aspects (such as in the proposed journalist shield law). 
That would be a discussion worth having.

Source -  The new MSNBC.com: It's 'what Progressives have been waiting for',  Washington Times

Perils of Insta-News: FCC's Free WiFi?

The Internet has had a big impact on journalism, and not all of it good.  It can mean news stories breaking in seconds, lets just about anyone call themselves a journalist or a news source. And it can spread false and misleading reports rapidly and widely, as well as reveal the ignorance of journalists - even the "real", professional ones.
  We had a revealing example this week, set off by an article in the Washington Post about some FCC announcements about plans to repurpose some radio spectrum that it hopes to recover from broadcasters and older cellular systems.  This wasn't breaking news, at least for those following the issue - the FCC has had a goal of promoting wireless Internet access, and broadband access since the early days of the Obama administration.  Plans to recover spectrum have been discussed for years, and earlier this year President Obama announced plans to use part of the spectrum for a national broadband service (and part for expanding bandwidth available for public service and emergency uses).  There's also been discussions of expanding bandwidth for localized "public" WiFi uses.  And of course, broadcasters and telecomm (cellular) operators have opposed FCC proposals to grab back valuable spectrum (which would also limit their ability to expand services or offer new services in the future).
  Here's the Post lede:

The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month. The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say.

This led to an outbreak of stories about the FCC building a nationwide free WiFi network.  While the lede doesn't directly say that, you could consider that folks who don't know the difference between wireless, WiFi, WiMax, and wireless broadband, or know that the FCC only sets standards and assigns frequencies and has no specific authority to operate telecommunications systems, might jump to the wrong conclusion.  So there was a day or two of stories flying around about the FCC's "Free WiFi" plans before those who actually knew what was going on started debunking the wilder claims.
  But the problem wasn't just the jumping to wild conclusions - the basic lede is also wrong.  The government wasn't proposing to create networks; instead the reporter seems to have mixed elements of two separate proposals. One was to dedicate some (hoped-for) bandwidth to a specific use - the development of a national wireless broadband network; the other was to allow WiFi to operate in the "white spaces" of existing TV spectrum. 
  In the wireless broadband proposal, the FCC would create a new telecommunication service, national wireless broadband, and dedicate some bandwidth to be used exclusively for that service.  The FCC would set up standards, define markets, and create licenses that would be auctioned off to groups who would build the network and offer the service - most likely commercially.  There's been no serious consideration of having the FCC actually build and run the service - although there is likely to be some subsidization involved. Furthermore, the technically-inclined know that WiFi isn't a good way to provide widespread wireless broadband access - it can offer the raw bandwidth, but that bandwidth is shared with other users, and the range of the signal is fairly low.  There's a long history of cities trying free WiFi networks in neighborhoods, and educational institutions offering WiFi across campus - not with a lot of success.  Free, open-to-the-public large area WiFi is quickly overloaded, so most of those found that they needed to limit access.  In the meantime, there are alternative wireless broadband technologies available.  True 4G cellular offers wireless broadband, as do some of the newer satellite-based data services, and the new WiMax2 standard (there's a couple of others also being discussed of questionable technical viability).  Between the desire to maximize auction revenues, and the significant infrastructure costs that would be involved, there's little chance that any resulting service would be "free."  In addition, while many of the concerns being voiced are coming from big telecomm, they're more about the spectrum grab that will be used to provide the bandwidth for the new service, the need for a totally new service when viable services already exist, and whether the subsidies being talked about might not be used more effectively at expanding those into less economically-viable areas, or subsidizing service costs.
  The WiFi "white space" proposal is quite different.  Existing WiFi operates in "public" bandwidth - parts of the spectrum that the FCC has opened for the public to use on an "as available" basis.  Use of those frequencies for WiFi do not require licenses from the FCC, but they also don't guarantee availability.  Rapid diffusion of WiFi, and other authorized uses for that spectrum, has led to some overcrowding and slowed data rates in high-traffic areas.  Since the authorized uses are low-power and highly localized (20-35 meter diameter for WiFi), the FCC is considering allowing WiFi to use what is called "white space."  White space refers to areas where the primary licensee's signal is weak or doesn't reach.  Broadcasters on the same, or adjacent, channels have to be a certain distance apart so that they don't interfere with one another.  As a result, there are a lot of channels in communities where there is no existing signal.  The FCC is considering letting WiFi, which already searches for available channels within currently designated bands, to also search for available "white space" in the TV bands and use those if they were currently unused.  The TV industry, in response, has voiced concerns about their part of the spectrum grab, and the possibility that the low-power WiFi could create some signal interference for the primary licensed signal.  Opening up the white space would expand the usable bandwidth for the "public" WiFi service and expand the overall capacity of WiFi.  But it wouldn't specifically make it public in the sense of freely available or noncommercial, and it certainly wouldn't have any impact of costs.
  There's nothing in either specifically addressing IP telephony or Internet surfing in these plans.  And while the moves may help expand wireless and allow Net access via methods other than mobile cellular, at some point those wireless options connect to wired gateways, and someone is paying for that connection.  There's no free lunch implied or promised.  Even with subsidies or mandated service access, someone is paying - you're just shifting the cost burden elsewhere.
  As for lobbying, yes there's some - but it's not all that fierce or directed in the way suggested in the article.  The reporter, in fact, bases this on the concerns of "some analysts," and fails to identify any specific corporate or telecomm lobbying effort.  Even the concerns of "consumer advocates" is false - when it comes to cellphones and Internet access, the poor often have greater access and use than wealthier demographics.  (While they may not "afford it", they do end up using it).

  Journalists really should become better informed and less credulous, particularly when some group is pushing a story or meme.  All this hyperbole and jumping to conclusions isn't helping their credibility.

Source:  There Is No FCC Plan for Free Super Wi-Fi,  Slate.com
Tech, telecomm giants take sides as FCC proposes large public WiFi networks, Washington Post

Getting It Wrong - "The Era of Error"?

Paul Farhi has an interesting and troubling piece in the latest American Journalism Review - Mistaken Nation, about the growing problem of errors in journalism.  He starts with a tale of one big story that turned out to be only half right.  In 2007, Ben Smith, at then start-up Politico, got a tip from a trusted source that Elizabeth Edwards' cancer had returned, and as a result John Edwards was going to withdraw from the 2008 Presidential race at a scheduled press conference later that day.  Politico went with the story, and created a modest media firestorm.  At the Edwards presser, he confirmed his wife's relapse, but announced he was staying in the race.
"It was a really awful moment, personally," Smith recalled, adding he saw no clear lesson from the event, although his credibility might have taken a hit.  No lesson? How about this - don't make predictions based on a single unverified source; people can change their minds.

  American journalism students are weened on the apochryphal "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline in the Chicago Tribune missing the call of the 1948 Presidential election.  Blamed on deadline pressures and a printer's strike, the rush to get the big story first is still an embarrassment for the venerable daily.  And for all the emphasis j-schools place on getting it right, once in the real world the focus seems to shift to getting it first, often at the expense of accuracy.
In addition, the capacity to review and verify is shrinking with the decline of copy editors.  A press that still reflexively and arrogantly proclaims its accuracy and veracity as the product of "layers and layers of editors and fact checkers" has laid off most of them.
  Scholars have been looking at the issue of accuracy and errors in news reporting for more than a half century - and in one of the biggest and most recent, found that more than 60% of local news and feature stories contained errors.

The reported inaccuracies included the relatively trivial and objective kind — misspellings, incorrect ages, titles and dates, etc. — to the more profound and subjective, such as misleading or distorted quotes, the omission of information or the overplaying of inconsequential facts (read: hype).

That study also found a correlation between the amount of errors and source's perception of the newspaper's reputation, and their willingness to cooperate with the paper's staff in the future.  Farhi concludes "errors not only hurt the newspaper's reputation, they damaged the media's working relationship with the very people they cover."

  And it's not just sources that notice errors and find that they damage credibility.  Gallup and Pew have regular tracking polls on the credibility of various news sources in the U.S. - and the number that find them to be generally credible keeps declining.  (here's recent posts on Gallup and Pew numbers).  Only about one in four (or less) feel that news generally gets their facts straight, and more see reporting as favoring one side and influenced by the powerful.  This should be a big problem for news organizations - after all, the value of news (as journalism) is directly tied to perceptions of its accuracy and veracity; to borrow a common claim among news outlets - "News You Can Trust."
   If you can't trust it, all that's left is a story's entertainment value.  While that may keep the readers and viewers happy and bring in the revenues, it's not what makes journalism the "Fourth Estate."
  After a few more anecdotes about "mistakes" large and small, Farhi brings the discussion to the confounding factor of the Internet.  The speed and reach of the Internet certainly makes it easier to compound errors, and certainly makes it easier and faster for people to note the errors.  You'd think that it would also speed and facilitate the ability of reporters to check and verify at least some of the more straightforward mistakes, but there's a bit of a problem there.  Reporters have to acknowledge that there may be mistakes - and most are loath to do so.  Another study from 2007 found that reporters and news organizations are reluctant to acknowledge errors.

News sources noticed lots of errors in the newspapers' stories... but they rarely complained about them. When they did, the response was about the same as if they hadn't bothered. Of the 130 cases in which a source informed the newspaper about an alleged error, the newspapers ran a correction only four times.

   Another issue is the rise of pack journalism, a groupthink mentality that almost rises to cult status - or in academic terms, the building of self-reinforcing memes that seems to create a truth that really never was.

As it happens, some of the greatest myths perpetrated by the media are about the media itself. One popular notion is that CBS News anchorman Edward R. Murrow's famous "See It Now" broadcasts in the 1950s "brought down" Sen. Joe McCarthy, the communist-hunting demagogue. Another is that President Lyndon B. Johnson concluded that he could not win reelection after another legendary CBS anchorman, Walter Cronkite, declared in 1968 that the Vietnam War was "mired in stalemate." Still another is that the press, particularly Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, drove President Richard M. Nixon from office in 1974 with a relentless stream of revelations about the Watergate scandal.
These tales have been told so many times (often by journalists) that they seem true. But each is a case study in what satirist Stephen Colbert labeled "truthiness" — a statement having an emotional foundation or the ring of truth but with little or no evidence to support it. Each of these myths is dismantled in W. Joseph Campbell's 2010 book, "Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism," which demonstrates the self-reinforcing power of mistakes. 

 It's something I see a lot of, both among my students and among the journalism profession - a belief that all you need is one source that backs you up, particularly if that source is from a "trusted" news source.  And, incredibly, even after that "trusted" news source has issued a correction, most will rely on that first report that reinforces the meme and their beliefs. Farhi provides some additional anecdotes, including one from his own past about a missing footnote.
   Farhi wonders if "this may be a Golden Age of non-facts, the Era of Error."  I'd like to think that the reporting's not gotten so biased or sloppy that it's a fundamental problem.  It's pretty clear that the changes in the media landscape has increased the pressure to get the story out quickly, and that economic pressures have reduced the "layers" of fact-checking and copy-editing.  I'd also make the argument that the Internet's given those errors and mistakes that are made greater exposure, and eliciting more, and more public, challenges.  In other words, errors, and news organizations' reactions to errors, are more visible and public - and that most organizations haven't come to grips with that reality, retaining their fundamental belief that as journalists, they're more likely to be right than their readers and viewers are.  Which is not always the case. 
   All these factors compound the impact of journalistic errors and mistakes - continuing the decline in the public's trust of news media.

   Anyway, the article's worth a read.

Source  -  Mistaken Nation,  American Journalism Review
  

More wall-busting in news.

Wouldn't you know it - after I do a post on the disappearing distinctions between news and advertising, I hear about a truly egregious case.  Take a look at the following screen capture from the online Washington Post -

 

On the webpage with their news coverage of the Presidential debate Wednesday is a twitter feed from the Obama campaign's "Truth Team," in full spin mode.  Has the Post wiped clean the old line between news and opinion? Has the Post abandoned objectivity and publicly jumped on the Obama bandwagon?

  Well, in this case - not blatantly.  Regular readers of the Post's online edition may have noticed that that upper right third spot on the Post's website is for reserved for advertising.  And if you look real close at the grey bar over the Obama campaign logo, you'll see in tiny grey letters against a marginally lighter grey background the word "Advertisement."

  Ask the Post and they'll tell you the Obama campaign bought the online ad spot.  The Post has every right to sell that spot, and the campaign has every right to buy it.  But did anyone at the Post even consider that letting a third of their debate coverage page be content fed directly from a campaign might give the appearance of a conflict of interest or favoritism?  Particularly as the campaign's content isn't reviewed by the Post, is tied to the Post's content, and where the ad's formatting of their content mimics the Post's own twitter feeds and fact-checking efforts.

  I don't know who was responsible, or whether they even considered how it would look; but at least some on the news side thought selling significant online ad space on newspaper websites to political campaigns was considered sufficiently newsworthy to do a story on another Obama campaign buy on a newspaper's home page.  The Obama campaign bought out most of the landing page for the Columbus Dispatch, with the ad's message tied to the lead story (at least at the time of the screen capture below) on the start of early voting.

 

At a minimum, these illustrate the collapse of the wall between editorial content and advertising.  The ads are substantial and atypical - significantly larger than the typical ads incorporated in the webpage layout and format.  They are also tied directly to the news content of that page.

  Twenty years ago, editors strenuously objected to selling large ads promoting products that were the focus of editorial reporting (or reviews) - and at a minimum insisting they had to be separated from the content to avoid the appearance that advertising support may have influenced coverage.  Within the last few years news organizations have openly supported a campaign to require that bloggers who write about products or services publicly reveal any direct or indirect payments received (advertising, in-kind products, etc.) related to the things they post about.  Today, the VP of Dispatch Digital, which runs the online edition of the Columbus Dispatch, welcomed similar buys from all campaigns.

  Do these, and similar instances, mark the end of the solid wall between advertising and editorial content?  Should we be even more concerned that the advertising in question is political advocacy, and is co-located with "news" coverage of the same topics?  I've been around long enough to have witnessed myriad ethical debates focusing on avoiding the smallest hint of an appearance of outsider influence on editorial content.  Its tough economic times for newspapers, and for many the ability to grow online revenues is important.  Still, I'd argue that maintaining the underlying value of a news outlet as an honest and reliable source of news and information is even more critical to keeping the outlet valuable to news consumers and long-term success in the news market.  Intermingling news, opinion, entertainment, and advertising hurts the "news" brand - and as long as these outlets see their business and focus as "news," they need to be concerned about actions and innovations with potentially negative consequences.  These two exemplars from the Washington Post and Columbus Dispatch, for example - while the ad revenues may help financially, their brands as news outlets have suffered, if only from the questions the over-the-board, atypical, efforts raise about the appearance (or possible reality) of influence.  At a minimum, the apparent lack of even minimal concern about possibility of outside influence on news content makes one wonder if the outlets remain concerned with, or supportive of, traditional journalistic norms of independence and objectivity.

  As I've said in previous posts, Americans' trust of news media is falling - precipitously. And if news media and outlets want to retain the traditional news brand and imprimatur of journalism, they need to at least stop doing things that damage their credibility with news consumers.  Like employing the new "native formats" by integrating political coverage with direct campaign advocacy.

  For the record, unlike broadcasters, there is no Federal requirement that newspapers (print or digital) sell advertising space to candidates and their campaigns, or at some minimum cost basis.  Still, with some recent interpretations of campaign finance laws, if they don't give the same opportunity to all other candidates, sell advertising to candidates and campaigns at costs below their normal rates, or charge candidates differently, some or all of the differences can be interpreted as campaign contributions to the favored candidate.  That will create problems for the online news site.

Source -  Obama Twitter feed takes over WaPo's website,  Washington Examiner

Election 2012: Is TV Relevant?

A recent post on MediaPost's TV Board blog suggests that television is becoming increasingly irrelevant in elections.  In it, Gary Holmes points to the minimal impact of the two major party conventions on surveys of candidate preference and the large declines in audience size.  While the decline in viewing isn't good, he turns to the demographic mix of convention coverage audiences for an explanation.  On each convention's final night, more than half of the TV audience was aged 55 or older; and more critically, those 18-34 made up only 15% of Democratic primary viewers, and 11% of Republican primary viewers.  News channels and shows skew older anyway, but not as extremely as live election event coverage seems to.  TV news and political coverage of the conventions just don't seem to be reaching uncommitted or swing voters in the electorate.

  History suggests that the audiences for the coming Presidential debates won't attract many of that segment of the electorate either - the debate audiences will most likely continue to primarily attract the older, committed partisans of the candidates, looking to score the hits like a prize fight judge.  And afterwards, there's likely to be a lot of punditry about disinterested and lazy publics failing to devote their attention to these "serious" debates.  However, I'll suggest that its increasingly rational for people looking for reliable information on which to base their vote to ignore the live coverage of the upcoming Presidential debates.  History shows that modern televised Presidential Debates rarely offer rational  discussion of the issues and positions. Rather, they're all about the candidates getting their pre-scripted talking points in (rather than providing meaningful answers to the actual questions asked), and the moderators doing their best to trigger "gotcha" moments about trivialities (rather than addressing and exploring the substantial candidate differences on critically important and pressing issues).  Modern debates don't have much impact unless a candidate makes a grievous error - which will be massively covered in the following weeks.
  Well, then, what about political advertising, slated to reach stratospheric levels this year?  The trouble with having a lot of political advertising is that you have a lot of political advertising.  TV stations and networks will be awash in multiple airings of attack ads - but ads, and particularly political ads, can quickly reach a saturation point beyond which they have little, if any, positive impact.  (Personally, I identify most of them in the first few seconds and immediately change channels - particularly attack ads)
Anecdotal evidence from the last few weeks might even suggest a backlash.  In the last few weeks, mainstream news media, television in particular, have trumpeted multiple claims that Romney "gaffes" have ended his campaign, a plethora of Obama campaign attack ads (labeled misleading and dishonest by fact-checkers) and additional buys for a PAC ad blasting Romney that even the Obama campaign said was dishonest and inappropriate.  And the result of this avalanche of all this negativity from television on Romney's support and approval levels?  National tracking polls show him picking up support from voters, to the point that he's come from several percentage points down, to being tied with (or slightly leading) Obama.
  But the money's been raised, and will be spent.  Attack ads will flourish and will likely to become really dirty and dishonest as the election nears (when the folks running campaigns calculate that it's too late for preposterous claims to be challenged effectively).  But by then, one hopes, a lot of people will have already tuned them out - and perhaps even tuned out the channels, stations, and programs they appear on (I predict a big increase in delayed viewing, as DVR let you quickly skip the nastyness).  And television, in terms of news coverage and live coverage of political events will become even less relevant.
  I do think that TV could correct the trend if it wanted to - but when media think partisanship and conflict drives ratings and profits, it doesn't seem likely.  So to the American electorate - let's make TV irrelevant in elections.  Maybe then the TV's incentives will shift to providing objective reporting and analysis instead of the current incentives to uncritically repeat partisan talking points.

Source - Is Television Becoming Irrelevant to the Election?,  TV Board, a MediaPost blog

The Decline and Fall of American News

(with apologies to the spirit of Edward Gibbon)

The latest edition of Gallup's examination of the American public's attitudes about news and media is out, and shows distrust of news media at an all-time high.

Further troubling news was when it came to paying attention to news about national politics, only 39% said they were following it very closely, down from the 43% who did so at the same point in 2009.

Partisanship & News -

The report shows and increasing differentiation in terms of following national political news by party affiliation - in 2008, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents clustered, with around 30% paying very close attention in 2008.  In the latest results there's a 9-point gap between Republicans and Democrats, and a 6 point gap between Democrats and Independents.  The likely surprise for those not following the Gallup trends, is that Republicans have lead Democrats in terms of paying close attention since 2009.

If you break down news media trust by party affiliation, you also get a strong trend of increasing partisanship...

If you think of these in conjunction, there are several interesting potential interpretations.  First, consider why Independents and Republicans have about half the trust in media reporting news "fairly" that Democrats do - and the possibility that that difference may be due in part to media bias.  If there is bias towards one group, it's natural for that group to have more trust - and for the out group to see the coverage as incomplete, inaccurate, and unfair.   What's interesting here is that for the last few years, that Independents largely share that perception of bias.
  Second, I wonder about the implications of Republicans greater interest in following national politics while showing very little trust in the ability of traditional mass media to provide "fair" coverage.  This would seem to suggest that those Republicans with a strong interest in national politics are likely to be going elsewhere for news and information about national politics.  And likely contribute further to the declining audiences for traditional news media.
  Gallup's own interpretation is not rosy, although they try to spin it a bit.

Americans are clearly down on the news media this election year, with a record-high six in 10 expressing little or no trust in the mass media's ability to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly.
On a broad level, Americans' high level of distrust in the media poses a challenge to democracy and to creating a fully engaged citizenry. Media sources must clearly do more to earn the trust of Americans, the majority of whom see the media as biased one way or the other. At the same time, there is an opportunity for others outside the "mass media" to serve as information sources that Americans do trust.

   The really bad thing is that I have seen very little effort on the part of "mass media" to try to restore trust among older consumers, or try to earn the trust of new generations of news consumers.  If anything, political news coverage has become increasingly trivial ( focus on horse race aspects, and gotcha moments rather than serious reporting and analysis of policies and impacts) and partisan - spin is blatant, overt, and in more and more cases, openly acknowledged.  These are not necessarily good things for news organizations struggling to remain competitive - not under the imprimatur of being news anyway.  Journalists have, over the years invested heavily in portraying news as objective, honest, and fair - as something very different from their image of PR "flacks" as spinning and distorting information to their clients' advantage.
  Do mass media really want to abandon those historic standards of "news" - and the perceptions of trust and credibility within the public sphere - to become just another promotional venue?  I would hope not, but that's just me.

Source - U.S. Distrust in Media Hits New High,  Gallup press release.

Confidence in TV News hits new low

The latest in Gallup's annual tracking poll of confidence in U.S. institutions showed that only 21% of Americans have either "a great deal of confidence in" or "quite a lot of confidence in" TV news - the lowest level since Gallup added TV news to its tracking poll in 1993.  The decline in confidence in TV news was the highest decline expressed this year (falling from 27%).  The poll showed that Americans have a bit more confidence in newspapers - 25%.  Confidence in newspapers declined slightly in the last year, but was still a bit higher than the 2007 level of 22%.  Still, it was half the level of confidence in newspapers at their peak in 1979 (51%).  While all of the annual declines are within the poll's sampling error, the trend is fairly obvious.

 

What's more interesting in this year's results are some of the demographic breakdowns, particularly for the TV news question.  This year's decline is fed by significant drops in confidence in TV news for self-identified liberals and moderates, who actually expressed less confidence in TV news that did conservatives.  Republicans and Independents shared the same level of confidence (17%), which was half of that indicated by Democrats (34%) - a result that could further fuel the debate about bias in TV news.  (One would expect that a truly unbiased news would have the same level of confidence across groups)  Perhaps more worrisome for TV news is that there appears to be a clear education effect - the more educated the respondent, the lower the amount of confidence expressed.  Of the demographic breakdowns presented, the lowest level of confidence in TV news (10%) was among those with postgraduate education.

In contrast, the decline in confidence in newspapers seemed to be more general, with just about every provided demographic breakdown showing a small decline in confidence.  The only significant declines in the last year were among men (fell from 30% to 23%), and self-identified liberals (fell from 37% to 30%).
  And in case you wondered, the survey was conducted in early June - well before CNN and Fox blew the initial call on the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare - so was not influenced by that very public error.  Also, yes, there's a general drop in the level of confidence shown in the 16 American institutions included in the survey (newspapers ranked 10th, TV news ranked 11th) - and once again Congress was the institution, of the 16 included in the survey, that Americans had the least confidence in (13%).

Source -  Americans' Confidence in Television News Drops to New Low, Gallup press release

Will the Evening News Become TMZ?

That's the question posed by Wayne Friedman in a post on the TV Watch blog, and the title of a talk that TMZ creator Harvey Levin at the National Press Club..  Also a very scary proposition for old-line journalists.
So what's behind the headline? For one thing, research showing a decline in traditional original reporting in favor of chatter, talk and debate about news, "horse race" reporting in politics, and a wide range of soft news stories - all backed by theories predicting that competition pushes news coverage to stories that come fast and cheap, that competition pushes aspects that can be differentiated, and continued audience demand for stories with drama, conflict, or voyeuristic glimpses of the rich and famous (or even the nearly rich and famous).
So maybe the question is not so absurd, in an era where a NY Times report lists TMZ/TMZ.com as of of the ten most influential news organizations (ahead of the LA Times, ABC, CBS, Fox, and Time magazine), where the head of CBS News bemoans the lack of real investigative news (just what is 60 Minutes up to these days?), and advertisers flock to the viewers of entertainment news who find its form of storytelling more engaging, and perhaps more powerful, than straight news reporting..
Can journalism and news organizations survive, and even prosper, by becoming TMZ? 
Programs and organizations might, but I think that the bright line not to be crossed for news and journalism is credibility. A program or organization can certainly be commercially successful with a focus on entertainment, gossip, and wild exaggeration (just take TMZ, the cable channel E, and the National Enquirer for example).  But the label of news and the profession of journalism needs to maintain certain standards for people to view it as credible, reliable, and news.  The news media have enough trouble remaining credible and respectable today, without embracing the TMZ philosophy.and throwing away whatever trust audiences have in news organizations.

Source - Will the Evening News Become TMZ?  TV Watch

Distrust of U.S. news media continues

The various news media in the U.S. have been taking a beating lately.  On the business side, revenues are dropping due to increased competition.  It also took many news organizations much too long to recognize and adapt to the emerging digital networked environment that captured entire segments of advertising, expanded competition, and bypassed traditional gate-keeping.  The push for speed in being the first to report has encouraged a decline in editing and fact-checking.  But perhaps the most significant problem, for the long-term viability of journalism, has been how publishers, editors, and journalists have responded to changing conditions and increased competition.

The stress for speed and the need to cut costs has contributed to a culture of "reporting" as rewriting press releases and minimal effort given to investigation.  Large scale investigative reporting has all but disappeared (if you look, most "investigative" pieces today result from reporters being given information from partisans, rather than independent pursuit of stories). Yet a bigger consequence is that there is even minimal investigation of details, prior coverage, or historical context.  Between a lack of historical perspective, sloppiness in verifying information, and the presence of an Internet that not only allows outsiders to engage in the kinds of verification abandoned by journalism, but also provides a platform for bringing the increasingly embarrassing errors to the attention not only of editors but the wider public, journalists, editors, publishers and news organizations are increasingly embarrassed by errors in the news content they produce.

Another potential long-term problem lies in how many news outlets have responded to increased competition- to try to cater to perceptions of public tastes.  Placing more emphasis on what the public wants, rather than the traditional screed of journalism to provide the information the public needs, need not be problematic in itself.  The problem emerges when there is a growing disconnect between journalists and the public.  When publishers and editors react to competition by emphasizing what they think drives media consumption (conflict, gossip, celebrity, scandal, etc.) they start to move from informing to entertaining.  Modern political coverage, in the shift to "horse-race" coverage epitomizes this - coverage of issues, and investigative coverage of claims and past performance have given way to discussions of the latest poll results, speeches, press releases, or arguments and allegations handily provided by candidates' opposition research efforts.  The fact that only having to discuss what other people are saying is not very expensive, and does not require much commitment of time, effort, or financial support provides an added incentive to shift emphasis in that direction.

The problem is that the public increasingly recognizes that much of what is labeled news is not really news, but opinion and entertainment.  The public is increasingly exposed to the errors encouraged by over-hasty reporting, as well as the growing discrepancy in how reporters and news media treat information coming from "friendly" sources as opposed to the other side.  And all of this raises concerns about the "objectivity", "accuracy," and most importantly, the credibility of news and news organizations.  The insistence of many news organizations that they are objective, and in the arrogance of their reactions when "non-journalists" point out errors, when the evidence of their own content shows otherwise only increases the disconnect and the distrust of journalists and news organizations.

Trust in American news media has been falling for decades.  The latest in a series of Gallup tracking polls found that 55% had little or no trust in news media, while 44% indicated having a great deal or a fair amount of trust.

The bigger problem is that if you look at the full results, only 11% of the sample indicated that they had a great deal of trust that media reported the news "fully, accurately, and fairly."  (One third indicating having a fair amount of trust).  But the value of news, as news, derives from the credibility of its source - and most US major news organizations claim that all of their news is reported "fully, accurately, and fairly").  The vast majority of the news-consuming public disagrees.

The Gallup report is supported by a recent Pew Research Center for the People & the Press study tracking public perception of twelve core press performance measures.  The latest results showed that negative perception levels  reached or tied all-time highs in nine of the twelve measures.  The Pew report tried for a bit of positive spin by saying that there were other groups held in even less esteem.

Now, when you ask about specific media, rather than news media generally, trust and impressions improve.  Still, when asked about the news source they use the most, a full 30% responded that they felt that stories were often inaccurate - hardly a ringing endorsement.  A look at the recent responses on the core performance levels shows a press facing the potential of losing the trust of the public that is the main determinant of their perceived value as news organizations.  They show a growing perception as being sloppy (inaccurate), dishonest (covering up their mistakes), unconcerned about the people they report on, and immoral; as being influenced by powerful people and organizations rather than a by a concern for truth or the public; as letting favoritism and politics shape coverage and reporting.  As for the press's historically claimed role as an independent fourth estate protecting democracy, as many people believe that current press behavior harms democracy as feel that it helps democracy.

The Gallup study also showed that most Americans see the press as showing a political bias, despite a slight gain indicating they felt news coverage was "just about right." Moreover, despite all of the claims from Democrats and mainstream news organizations about the emergence and dominance of "right-wing" and conservative media, the public perception is that if there is bias, it is overwhelmingly seen as a liberal bias.

One emerging criticism of the public is that bias and favoritism in news content is driven by people wanting, and shifting their news consumption to, news sources that reflects and supports their view of the world.  However, while this is true to some degree, the poll suggested overwhelming preference (62%) for news presented with no particular point of view.  When looking for online sources (the focus of much of that criticism), the revealed preference for sources with no particular view was even stronger, at 74%.  (Another indication of the growing disconnect between journalists and the public).

From the perspective (bias) of this blog, the problem revealed by these studies is not the type of bias or the concern of the political or social impact of inaccurate, biased, reporting or concerns about outside influence.  From the business perspective, and for the future of journalism, the concern is, and needs to be, the growing public perception that journalists and news organizations are failing in their self-identified duty of objectivity, accuracy, and to borrow the NY Times' slogan, delivering "all the news" necessary to fulfilling their role as the Fourth Estate and providing the information a democracy needs. News media, and perhaps journalism, are seen as not delivering on their promises of value. As a result, the perceived value of their product as news is declining.
From a business perspective, organizations may be able to survive by replacing lost news value with value from serving entertainment or other information needs, but as the mix of news and entertainment shifts more towards news, organizations are likely to enter a death-spiral from a journalism perspective.  News, and journalism, is losing credibility.  And as it loses credibility, the value of news diminishes, and organizations become even more desperate to find replacements for that lost value.  Journalism needs to stop the death spiral - either by rededicating itself to its historic emphases that it still largely claims, or it needs to develop alternative arguments (if it can) for the existence of value (to the news consumer, the public, or society generally) in the kind of news product that it currently, or wants to, provide.

Sources - Majority in U.S. Continues to Distrust the Media, Perceive Bias,  Gallup
Full Gallup report 
Press Widely Criticized, But Trusted More than Other Information Sources, Pew Research Report 
Complete Pew Research Report 

Edited - removed extraneous line feeds, cleaned up some typos and language.