May 29, 2007
How Important Is Television News? III Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 03:45 PM EST Mr. Gordon wrote that he “would be interested to see a comparison of the various news and broadcast channels’ signature evening news programs regarding Iraq coverage and fluff coverage. I bet Fox does nicely (more Iraq, less fluff) compared with the others, but that’s only a guess.” Would that it were so. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the cable news channels’ evening coverage from December 31, 2006 to March 31, 2007 broke down as follows:
PEJ’s report reads: “If Fox was less focused on the Iraq War, what took its place? Mostly—according to the numbers—Anna Nicole Smith. Coverage of her death trailed just barely the airtime spent on the Iraq policy debate, accounting for 9.6% of all the Fox content studied (versus 10.1% for the Iraq policy debate). Fox also stood out for its lack of coverage on the firings of the U.S. attorneys, compared with the other channels. The story, which gained real momentum in mid March, consumed a mere 2% of Fox’s total airtime. CNN devoted twice that percent (4%) and MSNBC four times (8%).”
What’s particularly incredible is that Anna Nicole Smith died on February 8, almost halfway through the sample period. I shudder to think how even more absurd these figures might look had she died toward the beginning of the quarter.
One last note. Mr. Gordon suggests that “maybe the reason CNN and MSNBC have so much Iraq news is that they are only too delighted to report the bad news,” presumably because of their, as he put it, “unconscious liberal bias.” There is a pernicious logic to this statement that I hope Mr. Gordon did not intend—to wit, that liberals delight in America’s military troubles in Iraq. Even if we accept his argument that CNN and MSNBC betray liberal bias—and that is a highly debatable charge; Lou Dobbs is about as anti-immigrant as they come on cable news—that’s a problematic statement. It’s worth remembering that CNN built much of its reputation during the 1991 Gulf War, when its coverage was both unrelenting and triumphant. Given the depth and consequences of our involvement in Iraq, 15 percent seems an inadequate level of coverage. It’s probably MSNBC and CNN that have it right.
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