Network TV Content, A Day in the Life

When it came to the other raw numbers, the commercial evening newscasts tended to stack up as less opinionated and more transparent than the morning news and cable.

Anonymous Sourcing

Over all on the broadcast networks, both the morning and evening newscasts on May 11 were more likely than media on average to use anonymous sources. Fully 42% of the commercial evening news stories contained at least one, compared with 31% of the media generally. On the morning news, it was 40%.

Reporter Opinion

Nightly news, however, was measurably more restrained than either morning news or cable when it came to reporters offering their opinions about the news. That might surprise those who complain that traditional nightly news is more filtered or controlled by the journalists than the more live and open format of morning and cable. On May 11, 32 % of commercial evening news stories contained reporters’ opinions. That was less than on morning news (48%) or cable (45%). Yet all of national television features more opinion than the media generally (13%). Here, incidentally, network news and cable stand in contrast to local TV news (1%).

To see this in practice, it is useful to walk through the day of network news as it happened.