As the 1996 Presidential campaign entered its final weeks, Dole renewed conservatives' claims of the media's liberal bias. Five years later, the Center for Media and Public Affairs reported that whereas during his first 50 days in office an average of 9.24 minutes were devoted to President Bush on network evening news, President Clinton received 18.04. As can be seen, over the past twenty years there has been a consistent growth in Americans' lack of confidence in the leadership of the press, with more than four out of ten claiming in 1994 to have "hardly any" confidence. While in the first half of the seventies Americans were half-again as likely to have hardly any confidence with television's decision makers as opposed to the press, by the mid-1990s their absence of faith in the leadership of both institutions was equally high.
So where do Americans acquire the information to inform their political beliefs? Odds are decreasingly likely that they go to newspapers: between 1975 and 1994, according to the NORC General Social Surveys, the percentage of American adults who read a newspaper daily declined from two-thirds to less than one-half. The Washington Post/Kaiser Foundation/Harvard University "Why Don't Americans Trust the Government" Survey (conducted in late 1995, n=1,514 adults eighteen years of age and older), found:
PERCENT SAYING GIVE "GREAT DEAL" OF ATTENTION TO POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT ON NATIONAL NETWORK TV NEWS BY AGE AND EDUCATION
| HS DROPOUT | HS GRAD | SOME COLL/ VOCATIONAL |
4+ YRS COL | AGE TOTAL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18- 34 |
6% |
16% |
10% |
19% |
14% |
| 35- 49 |
20% |
11% |
25% |
29% |
20% |
| 50- 64 |
23% |
15% |
31% |
37% |
25% |
| 65+ |
30% |
27% |
28% |
23% |
28% |
| EDU TOTAL |
21% |
16% |
20% |
27% |
28% |
Case Study:
TO WHAT EXTENT DOES WATCHING THE EVENING
NEWS
ON TELEVISION CONTRIBUTE TO POLITICAL
KNOWLEDGE?
Included in the "Why Don't Americans Trust the Government" Survey was the question "In a typical week, on how many days, if any, do you watch national network TV news on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, or CNN?" Twenty-nine percent of respondents answered three days or less and forty-two percent said seven. Querie: to what extent does such viewership affect individuals' knowledge about the American political process and issues?
To measure political knowledge, a scale was constructed from correct responses to the following questions:
Individuals are coded as having "high knowledge" if they answered eight or more of the eleven questions correctly, which 25% did.
To measure past issue knowledge, a scale was constructed from correct responses to the following questions:
Individuals are coded as having "high knowledge" if they answered four or more of the five questions correctly, which 17% did.
And to measure current issue knowledge, a scale was constructed from correct responses to the following questions:
Individuals are coded as having "high knowledge" if they answered five or more of the seven questions correctly, which 26% did.
When correlating frequency of watching television news with these three knowledge scales it initially appears that the medium does promote political socialization. Those watching the news the least (0-3 times/week) are 7 percentage points more likely than those watching daily to score low in both knowledge of past issues and of political processes, and 5 percentage points more likely to score low in knowledge of current issues.
However, to determine if, indeed, the evening news really has any socialization function one must at least control for the age and education of respondents. As can be seen in the table below, those with college degrees are over seven times as likely as high school dropouts to score high in political knowledge and nearly four times as likely to score high in their knowledge of current political issues. Further, the middle-aged (those 40-64) are twice as likely as those under 30 to score high in political knowledge and are twice as likely to have high current political issue scores.
PERCENT WITH "HIGH" KNOWLEDGE
| EDUC/AGE | POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE | PAST ISSUE KNOWLEDGE | CURRENT ISSUE KNOWLEDGE |
|---|---|---|---|
| HS DROPOUT | 8% | 14% | 11% |
| HS GRAD | 18% | 11% | 17% |
| SOMCOL/VOC | 35% | 16% | 22% |
| 4+YRS COL | 62% | 26% | 43% |
| 18-29 | 18% | 12% | 14% |
| 30-39 | 27% | 15% | 20% |
| 40-49 | 40% | 22% | 28% |
| 50-64 | 40% | 18% | 29% |
| 65+ | 30% | 14% | 25% |
In the graphs that follow are blue, yellow, and red lines for those watching the least, middling, and most amounts of news for all permutations of age and education (if no lines appear then none of that group scored on the high ends of the scales). Click to see:
Conclusion: In general, Americans would learn about as much of their government and its activities by watching their clothes spin in a dryer as they do watching the major networks' television news programs. In reflecting on the networks' coverage of the 1996 election results, the class noted how much of the traditional "civics lessons" of past coverages were missing this year.
So what lessons were learned by watching the evening news? Interestingly,
as viewing increases so does the likelihood of strongly agreeing with the
statement "Politicians tell voters what they want to hear, not what
they will actually try to do if elected." This relationship is greatest
among those with a high school degree and least among those with four or
more years of education.
Case Study:
FOCUSING ON THE LIMBAUGH
EFFECT
According to the same survey, some one-third of Americans listen to Rush Limbaugh's radio program--6% regularly, 12% "sometimes," and 16 percent "hardly ever." Who are the recipients of Limbaugh's conservative message?
