2005 Annual Report - Magazine Public Attitudes

In a world that is increasingly flooded with information, news magazines, particularly the weeklies, would seem well positioned for success. Their unique position in the media culture as synthesizers and summarizers is arguably needed more now than ever. Increasingly, however, survey data show that the declining interest much of the news media are facing is being felt in the magazine industry as well.

Credibility

The public "believability" numbers for the weeklies have been declining even faster than the rates at which they have lost readers. They now score better than many newspapers, but the Big Three news magazines rank below all the network news organizations and beneath CNN and Fox News cable outlets, according to surveys from the Pew Center for the People and the Press.¹ To be fair, these numbers may somewhat overstate the problem. News magazines have fewer people reading them, and non-readers tend to say they "don't know" if they trust the reporting, rather than trusting or not trusting.

Who the Public Believes

Percent of people who say they can believe most or all of what each outlet reports.

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, News Audiences Increasingly Polarized, June 8, 2004

These numbers are in some ways particularly damning for the weeklies. Freed from the constraints of daily or even hourly deadlines, their copy should in theory be much cleaner than that of their brethren in the electronic media. Instead the weeklies, while scoring higher than daily newspapers, seem to receive little credit for being more accurate. This may be due to their turning away from reporting events and toward "framing" and analyzing the news, as well as turning toward increased coverage of entertainment and lifestyle topics. The surveys found that magazines featuring lighter fare consistently scored lower than hard-news outlets on credibility.

News Magazine Believability Over Time

1985 - 2004, Select Years

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "News Audiences Increasingly Polarized," June 8, 2004

*Question: How would you rate the believability of ____ on a scale of 4 to 1?

Interestingly, U.S. News, the magazine that content analysis shows contains the most hard news, is ranked highest of the three news weeklies in believability.² It is also the only outlet that has had an increase in its credibility scores. The difference is slight, though, and the magazine also has the shortest trend line.